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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. , 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE CITY OF 
DREADFUL NIGHT 



By . 
RUDYARD KIPLING 

With Illustrations by 
CHARLES D. FARRAND 




ALEX. GROSSET & CO. 

I East Sixteenth St., New York 

1899 



35644 



Copyright, 1899 

BY 

ALEX. GROSSET & CO. 



WOCOPUxit ♦y5£C"IV£0, 






MAY 6 -1899 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAOE 

A Real Live City, 5 

CHAPTER n. 

The Reflections of a Savage, . . . .14 

CHAPTER III. 
The Council of the Gods, 35 

CHAPTER IV. 
On the Banks of the Hugli, 37 

CHAPTER V. 
With the Calcutta Police, 49 

CHAPTER VI. 
The City of Dreadful Night, .... 58 

CHAPTER VII. 
Deeper and Deeper Still 73 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Concerning Lucia, 83 



THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. 



CHAPTER I. 

A KEAL LIVE CITY. 

We are all backwoodsmen and barbarians to- 
gether — we others dwelling beyond the Ditch, 
in the outer darkness of the Mofussil. There 
are no such things as commissioners and heads 
of departments in the world, and there is only- 
one city in India. Bombay is too green, too 
pretty, and too stragglesome ; and Madras died 
ever so long ago. Let us take off our hats to 
Calcutta, the many-sided, the smoky, the mag- 
nificent, as we drive in over the Hugli Bridge 
in the dawn of a still February morning. We 
have left India behind us at Howrah Station, 
and now we enter foreign parts. No, not wholly 
foreign. Say rather too familiar. 

All men of certain age know the feeling of 
caged irritation — an illustration in the Graphic, 
a bar of music, or the light words of a friend 
5 



Zhc Cits of DreaDtul WghU 



from home may set it ablaze — that comes from 
the knowledge of our lost heritage of London. 
At home they, the other men, our equals, have 
at their disposal all that town can supply — the 
roar of the streets, the lights, the music, the 
pleasant places, the millions of their own kind, 
and a wilderness full of pretty, fresh-colored 
Englishwomen, theatres, and restaurants. It 
is their right. They accept it as sucTi, and even 
affect to look upon it with contempt. And we, 
we have nothing except the few amusements that 
we painfully build up for ourselves — the dolor- 
ous dissipations of gymkhanas where every one 
knows everybody else, or the chastened intoxi- 
cation of dances where all engagements are 
booked, in ink, ten days ahead, and where 
everybody's antecedents are as patent as his or 
her method of waltzing. We have been de- 
prived of our inheritance. The men at home 
are enjoying it all, not knowing how fair and 
rich it is, and we at the most can only fly west- 
ward for a few months and gorge what, properly 
speaking, should take seven or eight or ten lux- 
urious years. That is the lost heritage of Lon- 
don ; and the knowledge of the forfeiture, wilful 
or forced, comes to most men at times and sea- 
sons, and they get cross. 

Calcutta holds out false hopes of some return. 
6 



B IReal %ivc Citg^ 



The dense smoke hangs low, in the chill of the 
morning, over an ocean of roofs, and, as the 
city wakes, there goes up to the smoke a deep, 
full-throated boom of life and motion and hu- 
manity. For this reason does he who sees Cal- 
cutta for the first time hang joyously out of the 
ticca-gharri and sniff the smoke, and turn his 
face toward the tumult, saying: "This is, at 
last, some portion of my heritage returned to 
me. This is a city. There is life here, and 
there should be all manner of pleasant things 
for the having, across the river and under the 
smoke. " When Leland, he who wrote the Hans 
Breitmann Ballads, once desired to know the 
name of an austere, plug-hatted redskin of re- 
pute, his answer, from the lips of a half-breed, 
was: 

"He Injun. He big Injun. He heap big 
Injun. He dam big heap Injun. He dam 
mighty great big heap Injun. He Jones ! " 
The litany is an expressive one, and exactly 
describes the first emotions of a wandering sav- 
age adrift in Calcutta. The eye has lost its 
sense of proportion, the focus has contracted 
through overmuch residence in up-country sta; 
tions — twenty minutes' canter from hospital to 
parade-ground, you know — and the mind has 
shrunk with the eye. Both say together, as 
7 



^be Cits or BreaDful niQbU 



they take in tlie sweep of shipping above and 
below the Hugli Bridge: "Why, this is Lon- 
don! This is the docks. This is Imperial. 
This is worth coming across India to see ! " 

Then a distinctly wicked idea takes posses- 
sion of the mind: "What a divine — what a 
heavenly place to loot/ " This gives place to a 
much worse devil — that of Conservatism. It 
seems not only a wrong but a criminal thing to 
allow natives to have any voice in the control 
of such a city — adorned, docked, wharfed, 
fronted and reclaimed by Englishmen, existing 
only because England lives, and dependent for 
its life on England. All India knows of the 
Calcutta Municipality; but has any one thor- 
oughly investigated the Big Calcutta Stink? 
There is only one. Benares is fouler in point 
of concentrated, pent-up muck, and there are 
local stenches in Peshawur which are stronger 
than the B.C.S. j but, for diffused, soul-sicken- 
ing expansiveness, the reek of Calcutta beats 
both Benares and Peshawur. Bombay cloaks 
her stenches with a veneer of assafoetida and 
huqa-tohsicco ; Calcutta is above pretence. 
There is no tracing back the Calcutta plague to 
any one source. It is faint, it is sickly, and it 
is indescribable; but Americans at the Great 
Eastern Hotel say that it is something like the 
8 



B TReal %ivc Citg* 



smell of the Chinese quarter in San Francisco. 
It is certainly not an Indian smell. It resem- 
bles the essence of corruption that has rotted 
for the second time — the clammy odor of blue 
slime. And there is no escape from it. It 
blows across the maidan ; it comes in gusts into 
the corridors of the Great Eastern Hotel ; what 
they are pleased to call the " Palaces of Chou- 
ringhi" carry it; it swirls round the Bengal 
Club ; it pours out of by-streets with sickening 
intensity, and the breeze of the morning is laden 
with it. It is first found, in spite of the fume of 
the engines, in Howrah Station. It seems to be 
worst in the little lanes at the back of Lai Bazar 
where the drinking-shops are, but it is nearly 
as bad opposite Government House and in the 
Public Ofl&ces. The thing is intermittent. Six 
moderately pure mouthfuls of air may be drawn 
without offence. Then comes the seventh wave 
and the queasiness of an uncultured stomach. 
If you live long enough in Calcutta you grow 
used to it. The regular residents admit the dis- 
grace, but their answer is : " Wait till the wind 
blows off the Salt Lakes where all the sewage 
goes, and then you'll smell something." That 
is their defence! Small wonder that they con- 
sider Calcutta is a fit place for a permanent 
Viceroy. Englishmen who can calmly extenu- 
9 



Zbc Citg of BrcaOful MigbU 



ate one shame by another are capable of asking 
for anything — and expecting to get it. 

If an up-country station holding three thou- 
sand troops and twenty civilians owned such a 
possession as Calcutta does, the Deputy Com- 
missioner or the Cantonment Magistrate would 
have all the natives off the board of manage- 
ment or decently shovelled into the background 
until the mess was abated. Then they might 
come on again and talk of " high-handed oppres- 
sion" as much as they liked. That stink, to 
an unprejudiced nose, damns Calcutta as a City 
of Kings. And, in spite of that stink, they 
allow, they even encourage, natives to look after 
the place! The damp, drainage-soaked soil is 
sick with the teeming life of a hundred years, 
and the Municipal Board list is choked with the 
names of natives — men of the breed born in and 
raised off this surfeited muck-heap ! They own 
property, these amiable Aryans on the Municipal 
and the Bengal Legislative Council. Launch a 
proposal to tax them on that property, and they 
naturally howl. They also howl up-country, 
but there the halls for mass -meetings are few, 
and the vernacular papers fewer, and with a 
zubhardusti Secretary and a President whose 
favor is worth the having and whose wrath is 
undesirable, men are kept clean despite them- 
10 



B IReal Xtve Cits, 



selves, and may not poison their neighbors. 
Why, asks a savage, let them vote at all? 
They can put up with this filthiness. They 
cannot have any feelings worth caring a rush 
for. Let them live quietly and hide away their 
money under our protection, while we tax them 
till they know through their purses the measure 
of their neglect in the past, and when a little of 
the smell has been abolished, bring them back 
again to talk and take the credit of enlighten- 
ment. The better classes own their broughams 
and barouches ; the worse can shoulder an Eng- 
lishman into the kennel and talk to him as though 
he were a khidmatgar. They can refer to an 
English lady as an aurat ; they are permitted a 
freedom — not to put it too coarsely — of speech 
which, if used by an Englishman toward an Eng- 
lishman, would end in serious trouble. They 
are fenced and protected and made inviolate. 
Surely they might be content with all those 
things without entering into matters which they 
cannot, by the nature of their birth, under- 
stand. 

Now, whether all this genial diatribe be the 
outcome of an unbiased mind or the result first 
of sickness caused by that ferocious stench, and 
secondly of headache due to day-long smoking 
to drown the stench, is an open question. Any- 
11 



Zbc Citg ot DreaDful mtgbt. 



way, Calcutta is a fearsome place for a man not 
educated up to it. 

A word of advice to other barbarians. Do 
not bring a north- country servant into Calcutta. 
He is sure to get into trouble, because he does 
not understand the customs of the city. A 
Punjabi in this place for the first time esteems 
it his bounden duty to go to the Ajaib-ghar — the 
Museum. Such an one has gone and is even 
now returned very angry and troubled in the 
spirit. "I went to the Museum," says he, 
" and no one gave me any gali. I went to the 
market to buy my food, and then I sat upon a 
seat. There came a chaprissi who said: ' Go 
away, I want to sit here. ' I said : ^ I am here 
first. ' He said : ^ I am a chaprissi ! nikaljao ! ' 
and he hit me. Now that sitting-place was open 
to all, so I hit him till he wept. He ran away 
for the Police, and I went away too, for the Po- 
lice here are all Sahibs. Can I have leave from 
two o'clock to go and look for that chaprissi and 
hit him again? " 

Behold the situation! An unknown city full 
of smell that makes one long for rest and retire- 
ment, and a champing naukar, not yet six hours 
in the stew, who has started a blood-feud with 
an unknown chaprissi and clamors to go forth to 
the fray. General orders that, whatever may 
12 



B IReal Xive Cits* 



be said or done to him, he must not say or do 
anything in return lead to an eloquent harangue 
on the quality of izzat and the nature of " face 
blackening." There is no izzat in Calcutta, and 
this Awful Smell blackens the face of any Eng- 
lishman who sniffs it. 

Alas! for the lost delusion of the heritage 
that was to be restored. Let us sleep, let us 
sleep, and pray that Calcutta may be better 
to-morrow. 

At present it is remarkably like sleeping with 
a corpse. 



13 



CHAPTER II. 

THE REFLECTIONS OF A SAVAGE. 

Morning brings counsel. Does Calcutta 
smell so pestiferously after all? Heavy rain 
has fallen in the night. She is newly -washed, 
and the clear sunlight shows her at her best. 
Where, oh where, in all this wilderness of life, 
shall a man go? ITewman and Co. publish a 
three-rupee guide which produces first despair 
and then fear in the mind of the reader. Let 
us drop Newman and Co. out of the topmost 
window of the Great Eastern, trusting to luck 
and the flight of the hours to evolve wonders 
and mysteries and amusements. 

The Great Eastern hums with life through all 
its hundred rooms. Doors slam merrily, and 
all the nations of the earth run up and down 
the staircases. This alone is refreshing, be- 
cause the passers bump you and ask you to 
stand aside. Fancy finding any place outside a 
Levee-room where Englishmen are crowded to- 
gether to this extent ! Fancy sitting down sev- 
enty strong to table d^hote and with a deafening 
14 



XLbc tRcUcctlons ot a Savage* 



clatter of knives and forks! Fancy finding a 
real bar whence drinks may be obtained ! and, 
joy of joys, fancy stepping out of the hotel into 
the arms of a live, white, helmeted, buttoned, 
truncheoned Bobby ! A beautiful, burly Bobby 
— just the sort of man who, seven thousand 
miles away, staves off the stuttering witticism 
of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning reveller by 
the strong badged arm of authority. What 
would happen if one spoke to this Bobby? 
Would he be offended? He is not offended. 
He is affable. He has to patrol the pavement 
in front of the Great Eastern and to see that the 
crowding ticca-gharris do not jam. Toward a 
presumably respectable white he behaves as a 
man and a brother. There is no arrogance about 
him. And this is disappointing. Closer inspec- 
tion shows that he is not a real Bobby after all. 
He is a Municipal Police something and his uni- 
form is not correct; at least if they have not 
changed the dress of the men at home. But no 
matter. Later on we will inquire into the Cal- 
cutta Bobby, because he is a white man, and 
has to deal with some of the " toughest " folk 
that ever set out of malice aforethought to paint 
Job Charnock's city vermillion. You must not, 
you cannot cross Old Court House Street with- 
out looking carefully to see that you stand no 
15 



Zbc Cit^ ot BceaDfuI mfgbt. 



chance of being run over. This is beautiful. 
There is a steady roar of traffic, cut every two 
minutes by the deeper roll of the trams. The 
driving is eccentric, not to say bad, but there 
is the traffic — more than unsophisticated eyes 
have beheld for a certain number of years. It 
means business, it means money-making, it 
means crowded and hurrying life, and it gets 
into the blood and makes it move. Here be big 
shops with plate-glass fronts — all displaying the 
well-known names of firms that we savages only 
correspond with through the V. P. P. and Par- 
cels Post. They are all here, as large as life, 
ready to supply anything you need if you only 
care to sign. Great is the fascination of being 
able to obtain a thing on the spot without hav- 
ing to write for a week and wait for a month, 
and then get something c[uite different. No 
wonder pretty ladies, who live anywhere within 
a reasonable distance, come down to do their 
shopping personally. 

" Look here. If you want to be respectable 
you musn't smoke in the streets. Nobody does 
it. " This is advice kindly tendered by a friend 
in a black coat. There is no Levee or Lieuten- 
ant-Governor in sight ; but he wears the frock- 
coat because it is daylight, and he can be seen. 
He also refrains from smoking for the same rea- 
16 



Zbc IReflectlons of a Savage, 



son. He admits that Providence built the open 
air to be smoked in, but he says that " it isn't the 
thing." This man has a brougham, a remark- 
ably natty little pill-box with a curious wabble 
about the wheels. He steps into the brougham 
and puts on — a top hat, a shiny black "plug." 

There was a man up-country once who owned 
a top-hat. He leased it to amateur theatrical 
companies for some seasons until the nap wore 
off. Then he threw it into a tree and wild bees 
hived in it. Men were wont to come and look 
at the hat, in its palmy days, for the sake of 
feeling homesick. It interested all the station, 
and died with two seers of babul flower honey 
in its bosom. But top-hats are not intended to 
be worn in India. They are as sacred as home 
letters and old rosebuds. The friend cannot 
see this. He allows that if he stepped out of 
his brougham and walked about in the sunshine 
for ten minutes he would get a bad headache. 
In half an hour he would probably catch sun- 
stroke. He allows all this, but he keeps to his 
hat and cannot see why a barbarian is moved to 
inextinguishable laughter at the sight. Every- 
one who owns a brougham and many people who 
hire ticca- gharris keep top -hats and black frock- 
coats. The effect is curious, and at first fills 
the beholder with surprise. 
2 17 



Zbc Cits of BrcaDful IRigbt 



And now, "let us see tlie handsome houses 
where the wealthy nobles dwell." Northerly- 
lies the great human jungle of the native city, 
stretching from Burra Bazar to Chitpore. That 
can keep. Southerly is the maidan and Chou- 
ringhi. " If you get out into the centre of the 
maidan you will understand why Calcutta is 
called the City of Palaces." The travelled 
American said so at the Great Eastern. There 
is a short tower, falsely called a "memorial," 
standing in a waste of soft, sour green. That 
is as good a place to get to as any other. Near 
here the newly-landed waler is taught the whole 
duty of the trap-horse and careers madly in a 
brake. Near here young Calcutta gets upon a 
horse and is incontinently run away with. Near 
here hundreds of kine feed, close to the innu- 
merable trams and the whirl of traffic along the 
face of Chouringhi Eoad. The size of the mai- 
dan takes the heart out of anyone accustomed 
to the " gardens " of up-country, just as they say 
Newmarket Heath cows a horse accustomed to 
more shut-in course. The huge level is studded 
with brazen statues of eminent gentlemen rid- 
ing fretful horses on diabolically severe curbs. 
The expanse dwarfs the statues, dwarfs every- 
thing except the frontage of the far-away Chou- 
ringhi Road. It is big — it is impressive. There 
18 



XLbc IRetlectlons of a Savage* 



is no escaping the fact. They built houses in 
the old days when the rupee was two shillings 
and a penny. Those houses are three-storied, 
and ornamented with service-staircases like 
houses in the Hills. They are also very close 
together, and they own garden walls of pukka- 
masonry pierced with a single gate. In their 
shut-upness they are British. In their spacious- 
ness they are Oriental, but those service-stair- 
cases do not look healthy. We will form an 
amateur sanitary commission and call upon 
Chouringhi. 

A first introduction to the Calcutta durwan is 
not nice. If he is chewing pan, he does not 
take the trouble to get rid of his quid. If he is 
sitting on his charpoy chewing sugarcane, he 
does nob think it worth his while to rise. He 
has to be taught those things, and he cannot 
understand why he should be reproved. Clearly 
he is a survival of a played-out system. Provi- 
dence never intended that any native should be 
made a concierge more insolent than any of the 
French variety. The people of Calcutta put an 
Uria in a little lodge close to the gate of their 
house, in order that loafers may be turned away, 
and the houses protected from theft. The nat- 
ural result is that the durwan treats everybody 
whom he does not know as a loafer, has an in- 
19 



XLbc Ctt^ of BreaDful Bigbt 



timate and vendible knowledge of all the out- 
goings and incomings in that house, and con- 
trols, to a large extent, the nomination of the 
naukar-log. They say that one of the estimable 
class is now suing a bank for about three lakhs 
of rupees. Up-country, a Lieutenant-Governor's 
charprassi has to work for thirty years before he 
can retire on seventy thousand rupees of savings. 
The Calcutta durwan is a great institution. The 
head and front of his offence is that he will in- 
sist upon trying to talk English. How he pro- 
tects the houses Calcutta only knows. He can 
be frightened out of his wits by severe speech, 
and is generally asleep in calling hours. If a 
rough round of visits be any guide, three times 
out of seven he is fragrant of drink. So much 
for the durwan. Now for the houses he guards. 
Very pleasant is the sensation of being ush- 
ered into a pestiferously stablesome drawing- 
room. " Does this always happen? " No, " not 
unless you shut up the room for some time ; but 
if you open the jhilmills there are other smells. 
Tou see the stables and the servants' quarters 
are close too.'' People pay five hundred a 
month for half-a-dozen rooms filled with attr of 
this kind. They make no complaint. When 
they think the honor of the city is at stake they 
say defiantly: "Yes, but you must remember 
20 



XLbc IReflectione ot a Savage. 



we're a metropolis. We are crowded here. We 
have no room. We aren't like your little sta- 
tions." Chouringhi is a stately place full of 
sumptuous houses, but it is best to look at it 
hastily. Stop to consider for a moment what 
the cramped compounds, the black soaked soil, 
the netted intricacies of the service-staircases, 
the packed stables, the seethment of human 
life round the durwans' lodges, and the curious 
arrangement of little open drains means, and 
you will call it a whited sepulchre. 

Men living in expensive tenements suffer from 
chronic sore-throat, and will tell you cheerily 
that "we've got typhoid in Calcutta now." Is 
the pest ever out of it? Everything seems to 
be built with a view to its comfort. It can 
lodge comfortably on roofs, climb along from 
the gutter-pipe to piazza, "or rise from sink to 
verandah and thence to the topmost story. But 
Calcutta says that all is sound and produces fig- 
ures to prove it; at the same time admitting 
that healthy cut flesh will not readily heal. 
Further evidence may be dispensed with. 

Here come pouring down Park Street on the 
maidan a rush of broughams, neat buggies, the 
lightest of gigs, trim office brownberrys, shin- 
ing victorias, and a sprinkling of veritable han- 
som cabs. In the broughams sit men in top- 

n 



^be Cits of 2)reaDful migbt» 



hats. In the other carts, young men, all very 
much alike, and all immaculately turned out. 
A fresh stream from Chouringhi joins the Park 
Street detachment, and the two together stream 
away across the maidan toward the business 
quarter of the city. This is Calcutta going to 
office — the civilians to the Government Build- 
ings and the young men to their firms and their 
blocks and their wharves. Here one sees that 
Calcutta has the best turn-out in the Empire. 
Horses and traps alike are enviably perfect, and 
— mark the touchstone of civilization — the lamps 
are in the sockets. This is distinctly refreshing. 
Once more we will take off our hats to Calcutta, 
the well-appointed, the luxurious. The coun- 
try-bred is a rare beast here ; his place is taken 
by the waler, and the waler, though a ruffian at 
heart, can be made to look like a gentleman. 
It would be indecorous as well as insane to ap- 
plaud the winking harness, the perfectly lac- 
quered panels, and the liveried saises. They 
show well in the outwardly fair roads shadowed 
by the Palaces. 

How many sections of the complex society of 
the place do the carts carry? Imprimis, the 
Bengal Civilian who goes to Writers' Buildings 
and sits in a perfect office and speaks flippantly 
of " sending things into India, " meaning thereby 



Zbc IRetlections ot a Savage. 



the Supreme Government. He is a great per- 
son, and his mouth is full of promotion-and- 
appointment "shop." Generally he is referred 
to as a "rising man." Calcutta seems full of 
"rising men." Secondly, the Government of 
India man, who wears a familiar Simla face, 
rents a flat when he is not up in the Hills, and 
is rational on the subject of the drawbacks of 
Calcutta. Thirdly, the man of the " firms, " the 
pure non-official who fights under the banner of 
one of the great houses of the City, or for his 
own hand in a neat office, or dashes about Clive 
Street in a brougham doing " share work " or 
something of the kind. He fears not " Bengal, " 
nor regards he " India." He swears impartially 
at both when their actions interfere with his 
operations. His " shop " is quite unintelligible. 
He is like the English city man with the chill 
off, lives well and entertains hospitably. In 
the old days he was greater than he is now, but 
still he bulks large. He is rational in so far 
that he will help the abuse of the Municipality, 
but womanish in his insistence on the excellen- 
cies of Calcutta. Over and above these who 
are hurrying to work are the various brigades, 
squads, and detachments of the other interests. 
But they are sets and not sections, and revolve 
round Belvedere, Government House, and Fort 
83 



Zhc Cits ot Dreadful migbt 



William. Simla and Darjeeling claim them in 
the hot weather. Let them go. They wear 
top-hats and frock-coats. 

It is time to escape from Chouringhi Eoad 
and get among the long-shore folk, who have 
no prejudices against tobacco, and who all use 
pretty nearly the same sort of hat. 



H 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 

He set up conclusions to the number of nine thou- 
sand seven hundred and sixty-four ... he went after- 
wards to the Sorbonne, where he maintained argument 
against the theologians for the space of six weeks, from 
four o'clock in the morning till six in the evening, ex- 
cept for an interval of two hours to refresh themselves 
and take their repasts, and at this were present the 
greatest part of the lords of the court, the masters of 
request, presidents, counsellors, those of the accompts, 
secretaries, advocates, and others ; as also the sheriffs 
of the said town.— Pantagruel. 

"The Bengal Legislative Council is sitting 
now. You will find it in an octagonal wing of 
Writers' Buildings : straight across the maidan. 
It's worth seeing." "What are they sitting 
on?" "Municipal business. No end of a de- 
bate." So much for trying to keep low com- 
pany. The long-shore loafers must stand over. 
Without doubt this Council is going to hang 
some one for the state of the City, and Sir Steu- 
art Bayley will be chief executioner. One does 
not come across Councils every day. 
35 



XLbc Cfti? ot 2)reaDful mfgbt 



Writers' Buildings are large. You can trouble 
the busy workers of half-a-dozen departments 
before you stumble upon the black-stained stair- 
case that leads to an upper chamber looking out 
over a populous street. Wild chuprassis block 
the way. The Councillor Sahibs are sitting, 
but anyone can enter. " To the right of the Lat 
Sahib's chair, and go quietly." Ill-mannered 
minion ! Does he expect the awe-stricken spec- 
tator to prance in with a jubilant war whoop or 
turn Catherine-wheels round that sumptuous oc- 
tagonal room with the blue-domed roof? There 
are gilt capitals to the half pillars, and an Egyp- 
tian patterned lotus-stencil makes the walls 
decorously gay. A thick piled carpet covers 
all the floor, and must be delightful in the hot 
weather. On a black wooden throne, comfort- 
ably cushioned in green leather, sits Sir Steuart 
Bay ley. Ruler of Bengal. The rest are all great 
men, or else they would not be there. Not to 
know them argues one's self unknown. There are 
a dozen of them, and sit six-a-side at two slightly 
curved lines of beautifully polished desks. Thus 
Sir Steuart Bayley occupies the frog of a badly 
made horse-shoe split at the toe. In front of 
him, at a table covered with books and pam- 
phlets and papers, toils a secretary. There is 
a seat for the Reporters, and that is all. The 
26 



XTbe Council of tbe (3o&6» 



place enjoys a chastened gloom, and its very 
atmosphere fills one with. awe. This is the 
heart of Bengal, and uncommonly well uphol- 
stered. If the work matches the first-class fur- 
niture, the inkpots, the carpet, and the resplen- 
dent ceiling, there will be something worth 
seeing. But where is the criminal who is to be 
hanged for the stench that runs up and down 
Writers' Buildings staircases, for the rubbish 
heaps in the Chitpore Eoad, for the sickly savor 
of Chouringhi, for the dirty little tanks at the 
back of Belvedere, for the street full of small- 
pox, for the reeking gharri-stand outside the 
Great Eastern, for the state of the stone and 
dirt pavements, for the condition of the gullies 
of Shampooker, and for a hundred other things? 
"This, I submit, is an artificial scheme in 
supersession of Nature's unit, the individual." 
The speaker is a slight, spare native in a flat 
hat-turban, and a black alpaca frock-coat. He 
looks like a vakil to the boot-heels, and, with 
his unvarying smile and regulated gesticula- 
tion, recalls memories of up-country courts. 
He never hesitates, is never at a loss for a 
word, and never in one sentence repeats him- 
self. He talks and talks and talks in a level 
voice, rising occasionally half an octave when a 
point has to be driven home. Some of his pe- 
^7 



Zbc Cits ot 2)reaDful migbt. 



riods sound very familiar. This, for instance, 
might be a sentence from the Mirror : " So much 
for the principle. Let us now examine how far 
it is supported by precedent." This sounds bad. 
When a fluent native is discoursing of " princi- 
ples" and "precedents," the chances are that 
he will go on for some time. Moreover, where 
is the criminal, and what is all this talk about 
abstractions? They want shovels, not senti- 
ments, in this part of the world. 

A friendly whisper brings enlightenment: 
"They are plowing through the Calcutta Mu- 
nicipal Bill — plurality of votes you know ; here 
are the papers." And so it is! A mass of mo- 
tions and amendments on matters relating to 
ward votes. Is A to be allowed to give two 
votes in one ward and one in another? Is sec- 
tion 10 to be omitted, and is one man to be 
allowed one vote and no more? How many 
votes does three hundred rupees' worth of 
landed property carry? Is it better to kiss a 
post or throw it in the fire? Not a word about 
carbolic acid and gangs of domes. The little 
man in the black cJior/a revels in his subject. 
He is great on principles and precedents, and 
the necessity of "popularizing our system." 
He fears that under certain circumstances " the 
status of the candidates will decline." He riots 
2a 



XLbc Council ot tbe ©oDs, 



in "self-adjusting majorities," and the "healthy 
influence of the educated middle classes." 

For a practical answer to this, there steals 
across the council chamber just one faint whiff. 
It is as though some one laughed low and bit- 
terly. But no man heeds. The Englishmen 
look supremely bored, the native members stare 
stolidly in front of them. Sir Steuart Bayley's 
face is as set as the face of the Sphinx. For 
these things he draws his pay, and his is a low 
wage for heavy labor. But the speaker, now 
adrift, is not altogether to be blamed. He is 
a Bengali, who has got before him just such a 
subject as his soul loveth — an elaborate piece of 
academical reform leading no-whither. Here 
is a quiet room full of pens and papers, and 
there are men who must listen to him. Appar- 
ently there is no time limit to the speeches. 
Can you wonder that he talks? He says "I 
submit " once every ninety seconds, varying the 
form with " I do submit. " " The popular element 
in the electoral body should have prominence." 
Quite so. He quotes one John Stuart Mill to 
prove it. There steals over the listener a numb- 
ing sense of nightmare. He has heard all this 
before somewhere — yea; even down to J. S. 
Mill and the references to the " true interests of 
the ratepayers." He sees what is coming next. 



XLhc ait^ of 2)rea&ful MigbU 



Yes, there is the old Sabha Anjumaa journalis- 
tic formula — "Western education is an exotic 
plant of recent importation." How on earth 
did this man drag Western education into this 
discussion? Who knows? Perhaps Sir Steuart 
Bayley does. He seems to be listening. The 
others are looking at their watches. The spell 
of the level voice sinks the listener yet deeper 
into a trance. He is haunted by the ghosts of 
all the cant of all the political platforms of 
Great Britain. He hears all the old, old vestry 
phrases, and once more he smells the smell. 
That is no dream. Western education is an 
exotic plant. 'It is the upas tree, and it is all 
our fault. We brought it out from England 
exactly as we brought out the ink bottles and 
the patterns for the chairs. We planted it and 
it grew — monstrous as a banian. Now we are 
choked by the roots of it spreading so thickly 
in this fat soil of Bengal. The speaker contin- 
ues. Bit by bit. We builded this dome, visible 
and invisible, the crown of Writers' Buildings, 
as we have built and peopled the buildings. 
Now we have gone too far to retreat, being " tied 
and bound with the chain of our own sins. " The 
speech continues. We made that florid sentence. 
That torrent of verbiage is ours. We taught 
him what was constitutional and what was un- 
30 



ZDc Council of tbe (5o^e, 



constitutional in the days when Calcutta smelt. 
Calcutta smells still, but we must listen to all 
that he has to say about the plurality of votes 
and the threshing of wind and the weaving of 
ropes of sand. It is our own fault absolutely. 

The speech ends, and there rises a gray Eng- 
lishman in a black frock-coat. He looks a 
strong man, and a worldly. Surely he will say : 
" Yes, Lala Sahib, all this may be true talk, but 
there's a burra krah smell in this place, and 
everything must be safkaroed in a week, or the 
Deputy Commissioner will not take any notice 
of you in durbar ^ He says nothing of the 
kind. This is a Legislative Council, where 
they call each other "Honorable So-and-So's." 
The Englishman in the frock-coat begs all to 
remember that "we are discussing principles, 
and no consideration of the details ought to in- 
fluence the verdict on the principles." Is he 
then like the rest? How does this strange thing 
come about? Perhaps thesa so English office 
fittings are responsible for the warp. The Coun- 
cil Chamber might be a London Board-room. 
Perhaps after long years among the peos and 
papers its occupants grow to think that it really 
is, and in this belief give resumes of the history 
of Local Self-Government in England. 

The black frock-coat, emphasizing his points 
31 



Zbc Citg ot Dreadful IRigbt* 



with his spectacle-case, is telling his friends how 
the parish was first the unit of self-government. 
He then explains how burgesses were elected, 
and in tones of deep fervor announces : " Com- 
missioners of Sewers are elected in the same 
way." Whereunto all this lecture? Is he try- 
ing to run a motion through under cover of a 
cloud of words, essaying the well-known "cut- 
tle-fish trick" of the West? 

He abandons England for a while, and now 
we get a glimpse of the cloven hoof in a casual 
reference to Hindus and Mahomedans. The 
Hiudus will lose nothing by the complete estab- 
lishment of plurality of votes. They will have 
the control of their own wards as they used to 
have. So there is race-feeling, to be explained 
away, even among these beautiful desks. 
Scratch the Council, and you come to the old, 
old trouble. The black frock-coat sits down, 
and a keen-eyed, black- bearded Englishman 
rises with one hand in his pocket to explain his 
views on an alteration of the vote qualification. 
The idea of an amendment seems to have just 
struck him. He hints that he will bring it for- 
ward later on. He is academical like the others, 
but not half so good a speaker. All this is 
dreary beyond words. Why do they talk and 
talk about owners and occupiers and burgesses 
32 



Zbc Council ot tbe ©oDs, 



in England and the growth of autonomous in- 
stitutions when the city, the great city, is here 
crying out to be cleansed? What has England 
to do with Calcutta's evil, and why should Eng- 
lishmen be forced to wander through mazes of 
unprofitable argument against men who cannot 
understand the iniquity of dirt? 

A pause follows the black-bearded man's 
speech. Eises another native, a heavily-built 
Babu, in a black gown and a strange head-dress. 
A snowy white strip of cloth is thrown jharun- 
wise over his shoulders. His voice is high, and 
not always under control. He begins : " I will 
try to be as brief as possible." This is omi- 
nous. By the way, in Council there seems to 
be no necessity for a form of address. The ora- 
tors plunge in medias res, and only when they 
are well launched throw an occasional "Sir" 
toward Sir Steuart Bayley, who sits with one 
leg doubled under him and a dry pen in his 
hand. This speaker is no good. He talks, but 
he says nothing, and he only knows where he 
is drifting to. He says : " We must remember 
that we are legislating for the Metropolis of In- 
dia, and therefore we should borrow our insti- 
tutions from large English towns, and not from 
parochial institutions." If you think for a min- 
ute, that shows a large and healthy knowledge 
3 33 



Zbc Cits ot 2)rcaDful miQbt. 



of tlie history of Local Self-Government. It 
also reveals the attitude of Calcutta. If the 
city thought less about itself as a metropolis 
and more as a midden, its state would be better. 
The speaker talks patronizingly of "my friend," 
alluding to the black frock-coat. Then he floun- 
ders afresh, and his voice gallops up the gamut 
as he declares, "and therefore that makes all 
the difference." He hints vaguely at threats, 
something to do with the Hindus and the Ma- 
homedans, but what he means it is difficult to 
discover. Here, however, is a sentence taken 
verbatim. It is not likely to appear in this form 
in the Calcutta papers. The black frock-coat 
had said that if a wealthy native "had eight 
votes to his credit, his vanity would prompt him 
to go to the polling-booth, because he would feel 
better than half-a-dozen gharri-wans or petty 
traders." (Fancy allowing a gharri-wan to 
vote! He has yet to learn how to drive!) 
Hereon the gentleman with the white cloth: 
"Then the complaint is that influential voters 
will not take the trouble to vote. In my hum- 
ble opinion, if that be so, adopt voting papers. 
That is the way to meet them. In the same 
way — The Calcutta Trades' Association— - you 
abolish all plurality of votes: and that is the 
way to meet them." Lucid, is it not? Up flies 
34 



XTbe Council of the (3oD0. 



the irresponsible voice, and delivers this state- 
ment: "In the election for the House of Com- 
mons plurality are allowed for persons having 
interest in different districts." Then hopeless, 
hopeless fog. It is a great pity that India ever 
heard of anybody higher than the heads of the 
Civil Service. The country appeals from the 
Chota to the Burra Sahib all too readily as it is. 
Once more a whiff. The gentleman gives a de- 
fiant jerk of his shoulder-cloth, and sits down. 

Then Sir Steuart Bay ley : " The question be- 
fore the Council is," etc. There is a ripple of 
" Ayes " and " Noes, " and the " Noes " have it, 
whatever it may be. The black-bearded gen- 
tleman springs his amendment about the voting 
qualifications. A large senator in a white waist- 
coat, and with a most genial smile, rises and 
proceeds to smash up the amendment. Can't 
see the use of it. Calls it in effect rubbish. 
The black frock-coat rises to explain his friend's 
amendment, and incidentally makes a funny lit- 
tle slip. He is a knight, and his friend has 
been newly knighted. He refers to him as 
" Mister." The black cho(/a, he who spoke first 
of all, speaks again, and talks of the " sojorner 
who comes here for a little time, and then leaves 
the land." Well it is for the black choga that 
the sojourner does come, or there would be no 
35 



^be C(t^ ot DreaDful mghU 



comfy places wherein to talk about tlie power 
that can be measured by wealth and the intel- 
lect " which, sir, I submit, cannot be so meas- 
ured." The amendment is lost, and trebly and 
quadruply lost is the listener. In the name of 
sanity and to preserve the tattered shirt-tails 
of a torn illusion, let us escape. This is the 
Calcutta Municipal Bill. They have been at it 
for several Saturdays. Last Saturday Sir Steu- 
art Bayley pointed out that at their present rate 
they would be about two years in getting it 
through. Now they will sit till dusk, unless 
Sir Steuart Bayley, who wants to see Lord Con- 
nemara off, puts up the black frock-coat to move 
an adjournment. It is not good to see a Gov- 
ernment close to. This leads to the formation 
of blatantly self-satisfied judgments, which may 
be quite as wrong as the cramping system with 
which we have encompassed ourselves. And in 
the streets outside Englishmen summarize the 
situation brutally, thus : " The whole thing is a 
farce. Time is money to us. We can't stick 
out those everlasting speeches in the municipal- 
ity. The natives choke us off, but we know 
that if things get too bad the Government will 
step in and interfere, and so we worry along 
somehow." Meantime Calcutta continues to cry 
out for the bucket and the broom. 
36 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI. 

The clocks of the city have struck two. 
Where can a man get food? Calcutta is not 
rich in respect of dainty accommodation. You 
can stay your stomach at Peliti's or Bonsard's, 
but their shops are not to be found in Hasting 
Street, or in the places where brokers fly to and 
fro in office- jauns, sweating and growing visibly 
rich. There must be some sort of entertainment 
where sailors congregate. "Honest Bombay 
Jack " supplies nothing but Burma cheroots and 
whisky in liqueur-glasses, but in Lai Bazar, not 
far from "The Sailors' Coffee-rooms," a board 
gives bold advertisement that " officers and sea- 
men can find good quarters." In evidence a 
row of neat officers and seamen are sitting on a 
bench by the " hotel " door smoking. There is 
an almost military likeness in their clothes. 
Perhaps "Honest Bombay Jack" only keeps 
one kind of felt hat and one brand of suit. 
When Jack of the mercantile marine is sober, 
he is very sober. When he is drunk he is — but 
37 



XLbe am ot BreaDtul mgU. 



ask the river police what a lean, mad Yankee 
can do with his nails and teeth. These gen- 
tlemen smoking on the bench are impassive 
almost as Eed Indians. Their attitudes are un- 
restrained, and they do not wear braces. Nor, 
it would appear from the bill of fare, are they 
particular as to what they eat when they attend 
table d^hote. The fare is substantial and the 
regulation peg — every house has its own depth 
of peg if you will refrain from stopping Gany- 
mede — something to wonder at. Three fingers 
and a trifle over seems to be the use of the offi- 
cers and seamen who are talking so quietly in 
the doorway. One says — he has evidently fin- 
ished a long story — " and so he shipped for four 
pound ten with a first mate's certificate and all, 
and that was in a German barque." Another 
spits with conviction and says genially, without 
raising his voice : " That was a hell of a ship ; 
who knows her? " No answer from the pan- 
ehayet, but a Dane or a German wants to know 
whether the Myra is "up" yet. A dry, red- 
haired man gives her exact position in the river 
— (How in the world can he know?) — and the 
probable hour of her arrival. The grave debate 
drifts into a discussion of a recent river acci- 
dent, whereby a big steamer was damaged, and 
had to put back and discharge cargo. A burly 
38 



"^ 



Qn tbe 36tLnk6 of tbe Duglt 



gentleman who is taking a constitutional down 
Lai Bazar strolls up and says : " I tell you she 
fouled her own chain with her own forefoot. 
Hev you seen the plates?" "No." "Then 

how the can any like you say 

what it well was? " He passes on, having 

delivered his highly flavored opinion without 
heat or passion. No one seems to resent the 
expletives. 

Let us get down to the river and see this 
stamp of men more thoroughly. Clark E-ussell 
has told us that their lives are hard enough in 
all conscience. What are their pleasures and 
diversions? The Port Of&ce, where live the 
gentlemen who make improvements in the Port 
of Calcutta, ought to supply information. It 
stands large and fair, and built in an oriental- 
ized manner after the Italians at the corner of 
Tairlie Place upon the great Strand Eoad, and 
a continual clamor of traffic by land and by sea 
goes up throughout the day and far into the 
night against its windows. This is a place to 
enter more reverently than the Bengal Legisla- 
tive Council, for it houses the direction of the 
uncertain Hugli down to the Sandheads, owns 
enormous wealth, and spends huge sums on the 
frontaging of river banks, the expansion of jet- 
ties, and the manufacture of docks costing two 
39 



Zbc Cits ot ®rea&ful IWlgbt 



hundred lakhs of rupees. Two million tons of 
sea-going shippage yearly find their way up 
and down the river by the guida,nce of the Port 
Of&ce, and the men of the Port Office know more 
than it is good for men to hold in their heads. 
They can without reference to telegraphic bulle- 
tins give the position of all the big steamers, 
coming up or going down, from the Hugli to the 
sea, day by day, with their tonnage, the names 
of their captains, and the nature of their cargo. 
Looking out from the verandah of their offices 
over a lancer-regiment of masts, they can de- 
clare truthfully the name of every ship within 
eye- scope, with the day and hour when she will 
depart. 

In a room at the bottom of the building lounge 
big men, carefully dressed. Now there is a 
type of face which belongs almost exclusively 
to Bengal Cavalry officers — majors for choice. 
Everybody knows the bronzed, black-mous- 
tached, clear-speaking Native Cavalry officer. 
He exists unnaturally in novels, and naturally 
on the frontier. These men in the big room 
have its cast of face so strongly marked that 
one marvels what officers are doing by the river. 
" Have they come to book passengers for home? " 
"Those men! They're pilots. Some of them 
draw between two and three thousand rupees a 
40 



©n tbe asanftg ot tbe Ibu^lf. 



month. They are responsible for half-a-million 
pounds' worth of cargo sometimes." They cer- 
tainly are men, and they carry themselves as 
such. They confer together by twos and threes, 
and appeal frequently to shipping lists. 

^^ Isn't a pilot a man who always wears a pea- 
jacket and shouts through a speaking-trumpet? " 
" Well, you can ask those gentlemen if you like. 
You've got your notions from home pilots. Ours 
aren't that kind exactly. They are a picked ser- 
vice, as carefully weeded as the Indian Civil. 
Some of 'em have brothers in it, and some be- 
long to the old Indian army families." But 
they are not all equally well paid. The Cal- 
cutta papers sometimes echo the groans of the 
junior pilots who are not allowed the handling 
of ships over a certain tonnage. As it is yearly 
growing cheaper to build one big steamer than 
two little ones, these juniors are crowded out, 
and, while the seniors get their thousands, some 
of the youngsters make at the end of one month 
exactly thirty rupees. This is a grievance with 
them ; and it seems well-founded. 

In the flats above the pilots' room are hushed 
and chapel-like offices, all sumptuously fitted, 
where Englishmen write and telephone and tele- 
graph, and deft Babus forever draw maps of 
the shifting Hugli. Any hope of understand- 
41 



XTbe (Ifti2 of BreaDful mtgbt 



ing the work of tlie Port Commissioners is thor- 
ouglily dashed by being taken through the Port 
maps of a quarter of a century past. Men have 
played with the Hugli as children play with a 
gutter-runnel, and, in return, the Hugli once 
rose and played with men and ships till the 
Strand Road was littered with the raffle and the 
carcasses of big ships. There are photos on the 
walls of the cyclone of '64, when the Thunder 
came inland and sat upon an American barque, 
obstructing all the traffic. Very curious are 
these photos, and almost impossible to believe. 
How can a big, strong steamer have her three 
masts razed to deck level? How can a heavy, 
country boat be pitched on to the poop of a 
high-walled liner? and how can the side be bod- 
ily torn out of a ship? The photos say that all 
these things are possible, and men aver that a 
cyclone may come again and scatter the craft 
like chaff. Outside the Port Office are the ex- 
port and import sheds, buildings that can hold 
a ship's cargo a-piece, all standing on reclaimed 
ground. Here be several strong smells, a mass 
of railway lines, and a multitude of men. "Do 
you see where that trolly is standing, behind the 
big P. and 0. berth? In that place as nearly as 
may be the Govindpur went down about twenty 
years ago, and began to shift out ! " " But that 
43 



©n tbe JBanfts ot tbe Ibu^ll, 



is solid ground." "She sank there, and the 
next tide made a scour-hole on one side of her. 
The returning tide knocked her into it. Then 
the mud made up behind her. Next tide the 
business was repeated — always the scour-hole 
in the mud and the filling up behind her. So 
she rolled and was pushed out and out until she 
got in the way of the shipping right out yonder, 
and we had to blow her up. When a ship sinks 
in mud or quicksand she regularly digs her own 
grave and wriggles herself into it deeper and 
deeper till she reaches moderately solid stuff. 
Then she sticks." Horrible idea, is it not, to 
go down and down with each tide into the foul 
Hugli mud? 

Close to the Port Offices is the Shipping 
Office, where the captains engage their crews. 
The men must produce their discharges from 
their last ships in the presence of the shipping 
master, or, as they call him, " The Deputy Ship- 
ping." He passes them as correct after having 
satisfied himself that they are not deserters 
from other ships, and they then sign articles 
for the voyage. This is the ceremony, begin- 
ning with the "dearly beloved" of the crew- 
hunting captain down to the "amazement" of 
the identified deserter. There is a dingy build- 
ing, next door to the Sailors' Home, at whose 
43 



ZTbe Cite or 2)reaDful migbt. 



gate stand the cast-ups of all tlie seas in all 
manner of raiment. There are Seedee boys, 
Bombay serangs and Madras fishermen of the 
salt villages, Malays who insist upon marrying 
native women, grow jealous and run amok: 
Malay-Hindus, Hindu-Malay-whites, Burmese, 
Burma-whites, Burma-native-whites, Italians 
with gold earrings and a thirst for gambling, 
Yankees of all the States, with Mulattoes and 
pure buck-niggers, red and rough Danes, Cin- 
galese, Cornish boys who seem fresh taken from 
the plough-tail, " corn-stalks " from colonial ships 
where they got four pound ten a month as sea- 
men, tun-bellied Germans, Cockney mates keep- 
ing a little aloof from the crowd and talking in 
knots together, unmistakable "Tommies" who 
have tumbled into seafaring life by some mis- 
take, cockatoo-tufted Welshmen spitting and 
swearing like cats, broken-down loafers, gray- 
headed, penniless, and pitiful, swaggering boys, 
and very quiet men with gashes and cuts on their 
faces. It is an ethnological museum where all 
the specimens are playing comedies and trage- 
dies. The head of it all is the " Deputy Ship- 
ping," and he sits, supported by an English 
policeman whose fists are knobby, in a great 
Chair of State. The " Deputy Shipping " knows 
all the iniquity of the river-side, all the ships, 
44 



®n tbe 3BanFi0 ot the IbugU. 



all the captains, and a fair amount of the men. 
He is fenced off from the crowd by a strong 
wooden railing, behind which are gathered those 
who "stand and wait," the unemployed of the 
mercantile marine. They have had their spree 
— poor devils — and now they will go to sea 
again on as low a wage as three pound ten a 
month, to fetch up at the end in some Shanghai 
stew or San Francisco hell. They have turned 
their backs on the seductions of the Howrah 
boarding-houses and the delights of Colootolla. 
If Pate will, "Nightingales" will know them 
no more for a season, and their successors may 
paint Collinga Bazar vermillion. But what cap- 
tain will take some of these battered, shattered 
wrecks whose hands shake and whose eyes are 
red? 

Enter suddenly a bearded captain, who has 
made his selection from the crowd on a previous 
day, and now wants to get his men passed. He 
is not fastidious in his choice. His eleven seem 
a tough lot for such a mild-eyed, civil-spoken 
man to manage. But the captain in the Ship- 
ping Office and the captain on the ship are two 
different things. He brings his crew up to the 
"Deputy Shipping's" bar, and hands in their 
greasy, tattered discharges. But the heart of 
the " Deputy Shipping " is hot within him, be- 
45 



^be Qit^ of BreaDful migbt 



cause, two days ago, a Howrali crimp stole a 
^hole crew from a down-dropping ship, inso- 
much, that the captain had to come back and 
whip up a new crew at one o'clock in the day. 
Evil will it be if the " Deputy Shipping " finds 
one of these bounty-jumpers in the chosen crew 
of the Blenkindoon, let us say. 

The " Deputy Shipping '' tells the story with 
heat. '' I didn't know they did such things in 
Calcutta," says the captain. "Do such things! 
They'd steal the eye-teeth out of your head 
there, Captain." He picks up a discharge and 
calls for Michael Donelly, who is a loose- 
knit, vicious-looking Irish- American who chews. 
" Stand up, man, stand up ! " Michael Donelly 
wants to lean against the desk, and the English 
policeman won't have it. "What was your 
last ship?" ^^ Fairy Queen.^^ "When did you 
leave her?" " 'Bout 'leven days." "Captain's 
name ? " " Elahy . " " That' 11 do. Next man : 
Jules Anderson." Jules Anderson is a Dane. 
His statements tally with the discharge-certifi- 
cate of the United States, as the Eagle attest- 
eth. He is passed and falls back. Slivey, the 
Englishman, and David, a huge plum-colored 
negro who ships as cook, are also passed. Then 
comes Bassompra, a little Italian, who speaks 
English. "What's your last ship?" '' Ferdi- 
46 



On tbc JBanfts ot tbe tuxQlU 



nand,^' "No, after that?" "German barque." 
Bassompra does not look happy. "When did 
she sail? " " About three weeks ago. " " What's 
her name?" "J?a^Wee." "You deserted from 
her? " " Yes, but she's left port. " The " Dep- 
uty Shipping " runs rapidly through a shipping- 
list, throws it down with a bang. " 'Twon't do. 
No German barque Haidee here for three months. 
How do I know you don't belong to the Jackson's 
crew? Cap'ain, I'm afraid you'll have to ship 
another man. He must stand over. Take the 
rest away and make 'em sign." 

The bead-eyed Bassompra seems to have lost 
his chance of a voyage, and his case will be in- 
quired into. The captain departs with his men 
and they sign articles for the voyage, while the 
"Deputy Shipping" tells strange tales of the 
sailorman's life. " They'll quit a good ship for 
the sake of a spree, and catch on again at three 
pound ten, and by Jove, they'll let their skip- 
pers pay 'em at ten rupees to the sovereign — 
poor beggars! As soon as the money's gone 
they'll ship, but not before. Every one under 
rank of captain engages here. The competition 
makes first mates ship sometimes for five pounds 
or as low as four ten a month." (The gentle- 
man in the boarding-house was right, you see. ) 
" A first mate' s wages are seven ten or eight, 
47 



Zbc Citi2 ot 2)reaDtul mgbU 



and foreign captains ship for twelve pounds a 
month and bring their own small stores — every- 
thing, that is to say, except beef, peas, flour, 
coffee, and molasses." 

These things are not pleasant to listen to 
while the hungry-eyed men in the bad clothes 
lounge and scratch and loaf behind the railing. 
What comes to them in the end? They die, it 
seems, though that is not altogether strange. 
They die at sea in strange and horrible ways ; 
they die, a few of them, in the Kintals, being 
lost and suffocated in the great sink of Calcutta ; 
they die in strange places by the waterside, and 
the Hugli takes them away under the mooring 
chains and the buoys, and casts them up on the 
sands below, if the Eiver Police have missed 
the capture. They sail the sea because they 
must live; and there is no end to their toil. 
Very, very few find haven of any kind, and the 
earth, whose ways they do not understand, is 
cruel to them, when they walk upon it to drink 
and be merry after the manner of beasts. Jack 
ashore is a pretty thing when he is in a book or 
in the blue jacket of the Navy. Mercantile 
Jack is not so lovely. Later on, we will see 
where his " sprees " lead him. 



48 




FROM THIS EYRIE, IN THE WARM NIGHT, ONE HEARS THE HEART 
OF CALCUTTA BEATING." 



CHAPTER V. 

WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE. 

"The City was of Night — perchance of Death, 
But certainly of Night. " 

—The City of Dreadful NigM. 

In the beginning, the Police were responsible. 
They said in a patronizing way that, merely as 
a matter of convenience, they would prefer to 
take a wanderer round the great city themselves, 
sooner than let him contract a broken head on 
his own account in the slums. They said that 
there were places and places where a white man, 
unsupported by the arm of the law, would be 
robbed and mobbed ; and that there were other 
places where drunken seamen would make it 
very unpleasant for him. There was a night 
fixed for the patrol, but apologies were offered 
beforehand for the comparative insignificance of 
the tour. 

"Come up to the fire lookout in the first 
place, and then you'll be able to see the city." 
This was at No. 22, Lai Bazar, which is the 
4 49 



Zhc Cit^ ot 2)rea£)tul migbt 



headquarters of the Calcutta Police, the centre 
of the great web of telephone wires where Jus- 
tice sits all day and all night looking after one 
million people and a floating population of one 
hundred thousand. But her work shall be dealt 
with later on. The fire lookout is a little sen- 
try-box on the top of the three-storied police 
offices. Here a native watchman waits always, 
ready to give warning to the brigade below if 
the smoke rises by day or the flames by night 
in any ward of the city. From this eyrie, in 
the warm night, one hears the heart of Calcutta 
beating. ^Northward, the city stretches away 
three long miles, with three more miles of sub- 
urbs beyond, to Dum-Dum and Barrackpore. 
The lamplit dusk on this side is full of noises 
and shouts and smells. Close to the Police 
Office, jovial mariners at the sailors' coffee-shop 
are roaring hymns. Southerly, the city's con- 
fused lights give place to the orderly lamp-rows 
of the maidan and Chouringhi, where the re- 
spectabilities live and the Police have very little 
to do. Prom the east goes up to the sky the 
clamor of Sealdah, the rumble of the trams, and 
the voices of all Bow Bazar chaffering and mak- 
ing merry. Westward are the business quarters, 
hushed now, the lamps of the shipping on the 
river, and the twinkling lights on the Howrah 
50 



'Witb tbe Calcutta police. 



side. It is a wonderful sight — this Pisgah view 
of a huge city resting after the labors of the day. 
" Does the noise of traffic go on all through the 
hot weather? " " Of course. The hot months 
are the busiest in the year and money's tightest. 
You should see the brokers cutting about at that 
season. Calcutta canH stop, my dear sir." 
*^What happens then?" "Nothing happens; 
the death-rate goes up a little. That's all!" 
Even in February, the weather would, up-coun- 
try, be called muggy and stifling, but Calcutta 
is convinced that it is her cold season. The 
noises of the city grow perceptibly; it is the 
night side of Calcutta waking up and going 
abroad. Jack in the sailors' coffee -shop is sing- 
ing joyously: "Shall we gather at the Eiver 
■ — the beautiful, the beautiful, the Eiver?" 
What an incongruity there is about his selec- 
tions ! However, that it amuses before it shocks 
the listeners, is not to be doubted. An Eng- 
lishman, far from his native land, is liable to be- 
come careless, and it would be remarkable if he 
did otherwise in ill-smelling Calcutta. There 
is a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard below. 
Some of the Mounted Police have come in from 
somewhere or other out of the great darkness. 
A clog-dance of iron hoofs follows, and an Eng- 
lishman's voice is heard soothing an agitated 
51 



^be Cits of 2)reaDful miQbU 



horse who seems to be standing on his hind 
legs. Some of the Mounted Police are going 
out into the great darkness. "What's on?" 
"Walk-round at Government House. The Re- 
serve men are being formed up below. They're 
calling the roll." The Reserve men are all 
English, and big English at that. They form 
up and tramp out of the courtyard to line Gov- 
ernment Place, and see that Mrs. Lollipop's 
brougham does not get smashed up by Sirdar 
Chucker butty Bahadur's lumbering C-spring 
barouche with the two raw walers. Very mil- 
itary men are the Calcutta European Police in 
their set-up, and he who knows their composi- 
tion knows some startling stories of gentlemen- 
rankers and the like. They are, despite the 
wearing climate they work in and the wearing 
work they do, as fine five-score of Englishmen 
as you shall find east of Suez. 

Listen for a moment from the fire lookout to 
the voices of the night, and you will see why 
they must be so. Two thousand sailors of fifty 
nationalities are adrift in Calcutta every Sun- 
day, and of these perhaps two hundred are dis- 
tinctly the worse for liquor. There is a mild 
row going on, even now, somewhere at the back 
of Bow Bazar, which at nightfall fills with sailor- 
men who have a wonderful gift of f alli\ig foul 
53 



•QClttb tbe Calcutta police* 



of the native population. To keep the Queen's 
peace is of course only a small portion of Police 
duty, but it is trying. The burly president of 
the lock-up for European drunks — Calcutta cen- 
tral lock-up is worth seeing — rejoices in a 
sprained thumb just now, and has to do his 
work left-handed in consequence. But his left 
hand is a marvellously persuasive one, and when 
on duty his sleeves are turned up to the shoul- 
der that the jovial mariner may see that there 
is no deception. The president's labors are 
handicapped in that the road of sin to the lock- 
up runs through a grimy little garden — the brick 
paths are worn deep with the tread of many 
drunken feet — where a man can give a great 
deal of trouble by sticking his toes into the 
ground and getting mixed up with the shrubs. 
" A straight run in " would be much more con- 
venient both for the president and the drunk. 
Generally speaking — and here Police experience 
is pretty much the same all over the civilized 
world — a woman drunk is a good deal worse 
than a man drunk. She scratches and bites like 
a Chinaman and swears like several fiends. 
Strange people may be unearthed in the lock- 
ups. Here is a perfectly true story, not three 
weeks old. A visitor, an unofficial one, wan- 
dered into the native side of the spacious ac- 
53 



Zbc Cits ot DreaDtul IFltgbt* 



commodation provided for those who have gone 
or done wrong. A wild-eyed Babu rose from 
the fixed charpoy and said in the best of Eng- 
lish: "Good-morning, sir/' " (roocZ-morning; 
who are you, and what are you in for? " Then 
the Babu, in one breath : " I would have you 
know that I do not go to prison as a criminal 
but as a reformer. You've read the Vicar of 
Wakefield ? " " Ye-es. " " Well, / am the Vi- 
car of Bengal — at least, that's what I call my- 
self. " The visitor collapsed. He had not nerve 
enough to continue the conversation. Then said 
the voice of the authority : " He's down in con- 
nection with a cheating case at Serampore. May 
be shamming. But he'll be looked to in 
time." 

The best place to hear about the Police is the 
fire lookout. From that eyrie one can see how 
difficult must be the work of control over the 
great, growling beast of a city. By all means 
let us abuse the Police, but let us see what the 
poor wretches have to do with their three thou- 
sand natives and one hundred Englishmen. 
Prom Howrah and Bally and the other suburbs 
at least a hundred thousand people come in to 
Calcutta for the day and leave at night. Also 
Chandernagore is handy for the fugitive law- 
breaker, who can enter in the evening and get 
64 



Mltb tbe Calcutta ipoUce* 



away before the noon of the next day, having 
marked his house and broken into it. 

" But how can the prevalent offence be house- 
breaking in a place like this ? " " Easily enough. 
When you've seen a little of the city you'll see, 
Natives sleep and lie about all over the place, 
and whole quarters are just so many rabbit-war- 
rens. Wait till you see the Machua Bazar. 
Well, besides the petty theft and burglary, we 
have heavy cases of forgery and fraud, that 
leave us with our wits pitted against a Ben- 
gali's. When a Bengali criminal is working a 
fraud of the sort he loves, he is about the clever- 
est soul you could wish for. He gives us cases 
a year long to unravel. Then there are the 
murders in the low houses — very curious things 
they are. You'll see the house where Sheikh 
Babu was murdered presently, and you'll under- 
stand. The Burra Bazar and Jora Bagan sec- 
tions are the two worst ones for heavy cases; 
but ColootoUah is the most aggravating. There's 
Colootollah over yonder — that patch of darkness 
beyond the lights. That section is full of tup- 
penny-ha'penny petty cases, that keep the men 
up all night and make 'em swear. You'll see 
Colootollah, and then perhaps you'll under- 
stand. Bamun Bustee is the quietest of all, 
and Lai Bazar and Bow Bazar, as you can see 
55 



Zbc Cit^ or BreaDful niQbU 



for yourself, are tlie rowdiest. You've no no- 
tion what the natives come to the thannahs for. 
A naukar will come in and want a summons 
against his master for refusing him half-an- 
hour's chuti. I suppose it does seem rather rev- 
olutionary to an up-country man, but they try 
to do it here. Now wait a minute, before we 
go down into the city and see the Fire Brigade 
turned out. Business is slack with them just 
now, but you time 'em and see." An order is 
given, and a bell strikes softly thrice. There 
is an orderly rush of men, the click of a bolt, a 
red fire-engine, spitting and swearing with the 
sparks flying from the furnace, is dragged out 
of its shelter. A huge brake, which holds sup- 
plementary horses, men, and hatchets, follows, 
and a hose-cart is the third on the list. The 
men push the heavy things about as though they 
were pith toys. Five horses appear. Two are 
shot into the fire-engine, two — monsters these — 
into the brake, and the fifth, a powerful beast, 
warranted to trot fourteen miles an hour, backs 
into the hose-cart shafts. The men clamber up, 
some one says softly, "All ready there," and 
with an angry whistle the fire-engine, followed 
by the other two, flies out into Lai Bazar, the 
sparks trailing behind. Time — 1 min. 40 sees. 
" They'll find out it's a false alarm, and come 
56 



mttb tbe Calcutta police. 



back again in five minutes." "Why?" "Be- 
cause there will be no constables on the road to 
give 'em the direction of the fire, and because 
the driver wasn't told the ward of the outbreak 
when he went out ! " " Do you mean to say 
that you can from this absurd pigeon-loft locate 
the wards in the night-time?" "Of course: 
what would be the good of a lookout if the 
man couldn't tell where the fire was? " " But 
it's all pitchy black, and the lights are so con- 
fusing." 

"Ha! Ha! You'll be more confused in ten 
minutes. You'll have lost your way as you 
never lost it before. You're going to go round 
Bow Bazar section." 

" And the Lord have mercy on ray soul ! " 
Calcutta, the darker portion of it, does not look 
an inviting place to dive into at night. 



57 



CHAPTER YI. 

THE CITY OF DKEADFUL NIGHT. 

"And since they cannot spend or use aright 
The little time here given thetn in trust. 
But lavish it in weary undelight 

Of foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust — 
They naturally claimeth to inherit 

The Everlasting Future — that their merit 
May have full scope. . . . As surely is most just." 
— The City of Dreadful Night. 

The difficulty is to prevent this account from 
growing steadily unwholesome. But one cannot 
rake through a big city without encountering 
muck. 

The Police kept their word. In five short 
minutes, as they had prophesied, their charge 
was lost as he had never been lost before. 
"Where are we now?" "Somewhere off the 
Chitpore Eoad, but you wouldn't understand if 
you were told. Pollow now, and step pretty 
much where we step — there's a good deal of 
filth hereabouts." 

The thick, greasy night shuts in everything. 
58 



XLbc Citg of 5)reaDtul IFligbt. 



We have gone beyond the ancestral houses of 
the Ghoses of the Boses, beyond the lamps, the 
smells, and the crowd of Chitpore Eoad, and 
have come to a great wilderness of packed houses 
— just such mysterious, conspiring tenements as 
Dickens would have loved. There is no breath 
of breeze here, and the air is perceptibly warmer. 
There is little regularity in the drift, and the 
utmost niggardliness in the spacing of what, for 
want of a better name, we must call the streets. 
If Calcutta keeps such luxuries as Commission- 
ers of Sewers and Paving, they die before they 
reach this place. The air is heavy with a faint, 
sour stench — the essence of long-neglected abom- 
inations — and it cannot escape from among the 
tall, three-storied houses. " This, my dear sir, 
is a perfectly respectable quarter as quarters go. 
That house at the head of the alley, with the 
elaborate stucco-work round the top of the door, 
was built long ago by a celebrated midwife. 
Great people used to live here once. Now it's 
the — Aha! Look out for that carriage." A 
big mail-phaeton crashes out of the darkness 
and, recklessly driven, disappears. The won- 
der is how it ever got into this maze of narrow 
streets, where nobody seems to be moving, and 
where the dull throbbing of the city's life only 
comes faintly and by snatches. "Now it's the 
59 



Zhc Cltg of Brea^ful mfgbt 



what?" "St. Jolm's Wood of Calcutta— for 
the rich Babus. That ' fitton ' belonged to one 
of them." "Well it's not much of a place 
to look at." "Don't judge by appearances. 
About here live the women who have beggared 
kings. We aren't going to let you down into 
unadulterated vice all at once. You must see 
it first with the gilding on — and mind that rot- 
ten board. " 

Stand at the bottom of a lift and look up- 
ward. Then you will get both the size and 
the design of the tiny courtyard round which 
one of these big dark houses is built. The cen- 
tral square may be perhaps ten feet every way, 
but the balconies that run inside it overhang, 
and seem to cut away half the available space. 
To reach the square a man must go round many 
corners, down a covered-in way, and up and 
down two or three baffling and confused steps. 
There are no lamps to guide, and the janitors 
of the establishment seem to be compelled to 
sleep in the passages. The central square, the 
2mtio or whatever it must be called, reeks with 
the faint, sour smell which finds its way impar- 
tially into every room. " Now you will under- 
stand," say the Police kindly, as their charge 
blunders, shin-first, into a well-dark winding 
staircase, " that these are not the sort of places 
60 



# i. 




■A GLARE OF LIGHT ON THE STAIR-HEAD, A CLINK OF INNUMER- 
ABLE BANGLES, A RUSTLE OF MUCH FINE GAUZE, AND 
THE DAINTY INIQUITY STANDS REVEALED." 



XLbc Cits of DreaDful IFlfQbt 



to visit alone." "Who wants to? Of all the 
disgusting, inaccessible dens — Holy Cupid, 
what's this?" 

A glare of light on the stair-head, a clink of 
innumerable bangles, a rustle of much fine gauze, 
and the Dainty Iniquity stands revealed, blazing 
— literally blazing — with jewelry from head to 
foot. Take one of the fairest miniatures that 
the Delhi painters draw, and multiply it by ten ; 
throw in one of Angelica Kaufmann's best por- 
traits, and add anything that you can think of 
from Beckford to Lalla Eookh, and you will 
still fall short of the merits of that perfect face. ; 
Por an instant, even the grim, professional grav- 
ity of the Police is relaxed in the presence of 
the Dainty Iniquity with the gems, who so pret- 
tily invites every one to be seated, and proffers 
such refreshments as she conceives the palates 
of the barbarians would prefer. Her Abigails 
are only one degree less gorgeous than she. 
Half a lakh, or fifty thousand pounds' worth — ■ 
it is easier to credit the latter statement than 
the former — are disposed upon her little body. 
Each hand carries five jewelled rings which are 
connected by golden chains to a great jewelled 
boss of gold in the centre of the back of the 
hand. Ear-rings weighted with emeralds and 
pearls, diamond nose-rings, and how many other 
61 



Zhc Cit^ of BreaDful niQhU 



hundred articles make up the list of adornments. 
English furniture of a gorgeous and gimcrack 
kind, unlimited chandeliers and a collection of 
atrocious Continental prints — something, but 
not altogether, like the glazed plaques on bon- 
bon boxes — are scattered about the house, and 
on every landing — let us trust this is a mistake 
■ — lies, squats, or loafs a Bengali who can talk 
English with unholy fluency. The recurrence 
suggests — only suggests, mind — a grim possi- 
bility of the affectation of excessive virtue by 
day, tempered with the sort of unwholesome en- 
joyment after dusk — this loafing and lobbying 
and chattering and smoking, and, unless the bot- 
tles lie, tippling among the foul-tongued hand- 
maidens of the Dainty Iniquity. How many 
men follow this double, deleterious sort of life? 
The Police are discreetly dumb. 

" Now dooiH go talking about ^domiciliary vis- 
its ' just because this one happens to be a pretty 
woman. We've got to know these creatures. 
They make the rich man and the poor spend 
their money; and when a man can't get money 
for 'em honestly, he comes under our notice. 
Now do you see? If there was any domiciliary 
'visit' about it, the whole houseful would be 
hidden past our finding as soon as we turned up 
in the courtyard. We're friends — to a certain 
63 



XLbc Citg ot H)reaDtul IRigbt* 



extent." And, indeed, it seemed no difficult 
thing to be friends to any extent with the Dainty 
Iniquity who was so surpassingly different 
from all that experience taught of the beauty 
of the East. Here was the face from which 
a man could write Lalla Rookhs by the dozen, 
and believe every work that he wrote. Hers 
was the beauty that Byron sang of when he 
wrote — ■ 

"Eemember, if you come here alone, the 
chances are that you'll be clubbed, or stuck, or, 
anyhow, mobbed. You'll understand that this 
part of the world is shut to Europeans — abso- 
lutely. Mind the steps, and follow on." The 
vision dies out in the smells and gross darkness 
of the night, in evil, time-rotten brickwork, and 
another wilderness of shut-up houses, wherein 
it seems that people do continually and feebly 
strum stringed instruments of a plaintive and 
wailsome nature. 

Follows, after another plunge into a passage 
of a court-yard, and up a staircase, the appa- 
rifcion of a Eat Vice, in whom is no sort of ro- 
mance, nor beauty, but unlimited coarse humor. 
She too is studded with jewels, and her house 
is even finer than the house of the other, and 
more infested with the extraordinary men who 
speak such good English and are so deferential 
63 



Z\)c Cits ot 2)reaDtul nighU 



to the Police. The Fat Vice has been a great 
leader of fashion in her day, and stripped a ze- 
mindar Raja to his last acre — insomuch that he 
ended in the House of Correction for a theft 
committed for her sake. Native opinion has it 
that she is a " monstrous well-preserved woman." 
On this point, as on some others, the races will 
agree to differ. 

The scene changes suddenly as a slide in a 
magic lantern. Dainty Iniquity and Fat Vice 
slide away on a roll of streets and alleys, each 
more squalid than its predecessor. We are 
" somewhere at the back of the Machua Bazar, " 
well in the heart of the city. There are no 
houses here — nothing but acres and acres, it 
seems, of foul wattle-and-dab huts, any one of 
which would be a disgrace to a frontier village. 
The whole arrangement is a neatly contrived 
germ and fire trap, reflecting great credit upon 
the Calcutta Municipality. 

"What happens when these pigsties catch 
fire?" "They're built up again," say the Po- 
lice, as though this were the natural order of 
things. "Land is immensely valuable here." 
All the more reason, then, to turn several Haus- 
manns loose into the city, with instructions to 
make barracks for the population that cannot 
find room in the huts and sleeps in the open 
64 



XLU Citg ot BreaOtul mghU 



ways, cherishing dogs and worse, much worse, 
in its unwashen bosom. "Here is a licensed 
coffee-shop. This is where your naukers go for 
amusement and to see nautches." There is a 
huge chappar shed, ingeniously ornamented with 
insecure kerosene lamps, and crammed with 
gharriwans, khitmatgars, small store-keepers 
and the like. Never a sign of a European. 
Why? "Because if an Englishman messed 
about here, he'd get into trouble. Men don't 
come here unless they're drunk or have lost 
their way." The gharrkvans — they have the 
privilege of voting, have they not? — look peace- 
ful enough as they squat on tables or crowd by 
the doors to watch the nautch that is going for- 
ward. Five pitiful draggle-tails are huddled 
together on a bench under one of the lamps, 
while the sixth is squirming and shrieking be- 
fore the impassive crowd. She sings of love as 
understood by the Oriental — the love that dries 
the heart and consumes the liver. In this place, 
the words that would look so well on paper 
have an evil and ghastly significance. The 
gharriwans stare or sup tumblers and cups of a 
filthy decoction, and the kunchenee howls with 
renewed vigor in the presence of the Police. 
Where the Dainty Iniquity was hung with gold 
and gems, she is trapped with pewter and glass j 
5 65 



trbe C(t^ ot DceaDtul mt^bt. 



and where there was heavy embroidery on the 
Fat Vice's dress, defaced, stamped tinsel faith- 
fully reduplicates the pattern on the tawdry 
robes of the kunchenee. So you see, if one 
cares to moralize, they are sisters of the same 
class. 

Two or three men, blessed with uneasy con- 
sciences, have quietly slipped out of the coffee- 
shop into the mazes of the huts beyond. The 
Police laugh, and those nearest in the crowd 
laugh applausively, as in duty bound. Perhaps 
the rabbits grin uneasily when the ferret lands 
at the bottom of the burrow and begins to clear 
the warren. 

" The chandoo-sho-^s shut up at six, so you'll 
have to see opium-smoking before dark some 
day. No, you won't, though." The detective 
nose sniffs, and the detective body makes for a 
half -opened door of a hut whence floats the fra- 
grance of the black smoke. Those of the in- 
habitants who are able to stand promptly clear 
out — they have no love for the Police — and 
there remain only four men lying down and one 
standing up. This latter has a pet mongoose 
coiled round his neck. He speaks English flu- 
ently. Yes, he has no fear. It was a private 
smoking party and — " No business to-night — 
show how you smoke opium." "Aha! You 
66 



Zbc Cits of 2)reaDtul mfgbt 



want to see. Very good, I show. Hiyal you" 
— lie kicks a man on tlie floor — "show how 
opium -smoking." The kickee grunts lazily and 
turns on his elbow. The mongoose, always 
keeping to the man's neck, erects every hair of 
its body like an angry cat, and chatters in its 
owner's ear. The lamp for the opium-pipe is 
the only one in the room, and lights a scene as 
wild as anything in the witches' revel; the 
mongoose acting as the familiar spirit. A voice 
from the ground says, in tones of infinite weari- 
ness : " You take ajimy so " — a long, long pause, 
and another kick from the man possessed of the 
devil — the mongoose. " You take afim ? " He 
takes a pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the 
end of a knitting-needle. "And light afim." 
He plunges the pellet into the night-light, where 
it swells and fumes greasily. " And then you 
put it i]i your pipe." The smoking pellet is 
jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bamboo- 
stemmed pipe, and all speech ceases, oxcept 
the unearthly noise of the mongoose. The 
man on the ground is sucking at his pipe, 
and when the smoking pellet has ceased to 
smoke will be half way to Nibhan. "Now 
you go," says the man with the mongoose. 
"I am going smoke." The hut door closes 
upon a red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies, 
67 



Zbc Cltg of 2)reaDful IRfgbt, 



and tlie man witli the mongoose sinking, sink- 
ing on to his knees, his head bowed forward, 
and the little hairy devil chattering on the nape 
of his neck. 

After this the fetid night air seems almost 
cool, for the hut is as hot as a furnace. " See 
the puhka cliandu shops in full blast to-mor- 
row. Now for Colootollah. Come through 
the huts. There is no decoration about this 
vice." 

The huts now gave place to houses very tall 
and spacious and very dark. But for the nar- 
rowness of the streets we might have stumbled 
upon Chouringhi in the dark. An hour and a 
half has passed, and up to this time we have 
not crossed our trail once. " You might knock 
about the city for a night and never cross the 
same line. EecoUect Calcutta isn't one of your 
poky up-country cities of a lakh and a half of 
people." "How long does it take to know it 
then? " " About a lifetime, and even then some 
of the streets puzzle you." "How much has 
the head of a ward to know?" "Every house 
in his ward if he can, who owns it, what sort 
of character the inhabitants are, who are their 
friends, who go out and in, who loaf about the 
place at night, and so on and so on." "And he 
knows all this by night as well as by day?" 
68 



Zbc Cft^ ot DceaDful mm* 



" Of course. Why shouldn't he? " " No reason 
in the world. Only it's pitchy black just now, 
and I'd like to see where this alley is going to 
end." "Eound the corner beyond that dead 
wall. There's a lamp there. Then you'll be 
able to see. " A shadow flits out of a gully and 
disappears. "Who's that?" " Sergeant of Po- 
lice just to see where we're going in case of ac- 
cidents." Another shadow staggers into the 
darkness. " Who's that? " Man from the fort 
or a sailor from the ships. I couldn't quite 
see." The Police open a shut door in a high 
wall, and stumble unceremoniously among a 
gang of women cooking their food. The floor 
is of beaten earth, the steps that lead into the 
upper stories are unspeakably grimy, and the 
heat is the heat of April. The women rise 
hastily, and the light of the bull's eye — for the 
Police have now lighted a lantern in regular 
" rounds of London " fashion — shows six bleared 
faces — one a half native, half Chinese one, and 
the others Bengali. " There are no men here ! " 
they cry. "The house is empty." Then they 
grin and jabber and chew pan and spit, and 
hurry up the steps into the darkness. A range 
of three big rooms has been knocked into one 
here, and there is some sort of arrangement of 
mats. But an average country-bred is moiQ 



XLbc Cltg ot BreaDful niQbU 



sumptuously accommodated in an Englishman's 
stable. A home horse would snort at the ac- 
commodation. 

"Nice sort of place, isn't it? " say the Police, 
genially. " This is where the sailors get robbed 
and drunk." "They must be blind drunk be- 
fore they come." "Na — Na! Na sailor men 
ee — yah ! " chorus the women, catching at the 
one word they understand. " Arl gone ! " The 
Police take no notice, but tramp down the big 
room with the mat loose-boxes. A woman is 
shivering in one of these. "What's the mat- 
ter?" "Pever. Seek. Vary, vari/ seek." 
She huddles herself into a heap on the charpoy 
and groans. 

A tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the 
long room, and into this the Police plunge. 
"Hullo! What's here?" Down flashes the 
lantern, and a white hand with black nails 
comes out of the gloom. Somebody is asleep 
or drunk in the cot. The ring of lantern light 
travels slowly up and down the body. "A 
sailor from the ships. He's got his dungarees 
on. He'll be robbed before the morning most 
likely." The man is sleeping like a little child, 
both arms thrown over his head, and he is not 
unhandsome. He is shoeless, and there are 
huge holes in his stockings. He is a pure- 
7Q 



Zbc Cit^ ot 2)rcaDtul migbt 



blooded white, and carries the flush of innocent 
sleep on his cheeks. 

The light is turned off, and the Police de- 
part ; while the woman in the loose-box shivers, 
and moans that she is "seek: vary, va7y seek." 
It is not surprising. 



n 



CHAPTEE VII. 

DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. 

I built myself a lordly pleasure-house, 
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell ; 

I said : " O Soul, make merry and carouse, 
Dear Soul — for all is well." 

—The Palace of Art. 

" And where next? I don't like Colootollah. " 
The Police and their charge are standing in the 
interminable waste of houses under the starlight. 
" To the lowest sink of all, '' say the Police after 
the manner of Virgil when he took the Italian 
with, the indigestion to look at the frozen sinners. 
" And Where's that? " " Somewhere about here ; 
but you wouldn't know if you were told. " They 
lead and they lead and they lead, and they cease 
not from leading till they come to the last circle 
of the Inferno — a long, long, winding, quiet 
road. " There you are ; you can see for your- 
self." 

But there is nothing to be seen. On one side 
are houses — gaunt and dark, naked and devoid 
of furniture; on the other, low, mean stalls, 
73 



2)eeper anD 1S>ccpct Still, 



lighted, and with shamelessly open doors, 
wherein women stand and lounge, and mutter 
and whisper one to another. There is a hush 
here, or at least the busy silence of an officer 
of counting-house in working hours. One look 
down the street is sufficient. Lead on, gentle- 
men of the Calcutta Police. Let us escape from 
the lines of open doors, the flaring lamps within, 
the glimpses of the tawdry toilet-tables adorned 
with little plaster dogs, glass balls from Christ- 
mas-trees, and — for religion must not be de- 
spised though women be fallen — pictures of the 
saints and statuettes of the Virgin. The street 
is a long one, and other streets, full of the same 
pitiful wares, branch off from it. 

"Why are they so quiet? Why don't they 
make a row and sing and shout, and so on?" 
" Why should they, poor devils?" say the Po- 
lice, and fall to telling tales of horror, of women 
decoyed into ^jaZA^is and shot into this trap. 
Then other tales that shatter one's belief in all 
things and folk of good repute. " How can you 
Police have faith in humanity?" 

" That's because you're seeing it all in a lump 
for the first time, and it's not nice that way. 
Makes a man jump rather, doesn't it? But, 
recollect, you've asked for the worst places, and 
you can't complain." "Who's complaining? 
73 



Zbc Citg ot 2)reaDful niQhU 



Bring on your atrocities. Isn't that a European 

woman at that door?" "Yes. Mrs. D , 

widow of a soldier, mother of seven children." 
"Nine, if you please, and good-evening to you," 
shrills Mrs. D , leaning against the door- 
post, her arms folded on her bosom. She is a 
rather pretty, slightly-made Eurasian, and what- 
ever shame she may have owned she has long 
since cast behind her. A shapeless Burmo- 
native trot, with high cheek-bones and mouth 

like a shark, calls Mrs. D "Mem-Sahib." 

The word jars unspeakably. Her life is a mat- 
ter between herself and her Maker, but in that 
she — the widow of a soldier of the Queen — has 
stooped to this common foulness in the face of 
the city, she has offended against the white 
race. The Police fail to fall in with this right- 
eous indignation. More — they laugh at it 
out of the wealth of their unholy knowledge. 
" You're from up-country, and of course you 
don't understand. There are any amount of 
that lot in the city." Then the secret of the 
insolence of Calcutta is made plain. Small 
wonder the natives fail to respect the Sahib, 
seeing what ^ they see and knowing what they 
know. In the good old days, the honorable the 
directors deported him or her who misbehaved 
grossly, and the white man preserved his izzat, 
U 



Beeper anD Beeper SttlL 



He may have been a ruffian, but he was a ruffian 
on a large scale. He did not sink in the pres- 
ence of the people. The natives are quite right 
to take the wall of the Sahib who has been at 
great pains to prove that he is of the same flesh 
and blood. 

All this time Mrs. D ■ stands on the thres- 
hold of her room and looks upon the men with 
unabashed eyes. If the spirit of that English 
soldier, who married her long ago by the forms 
of the English Church, be now flitting bat-wise 
above the roofs, how singularly pleased and 

proud it must be! Mrs. D is a lady with 

a story. She is not averse to telling it. " What 
was — ahem — the case in which you were — er — 

hmn — concerned, Mrs. D ?" "They said 

I'd poisoned my husband by putting something 
into his drinking-water." This is interesting. 
How much modesty has this creature? Let 
us see. "And — ah — did you?" "'Twasn't 
proved, '* says Mrs. D with a laugh, a pleas- 
ant, lady-like laugh that does infinite credit to 
her education and upbringing. Worthy Mrs. 

D -! It would pay a novelist — a French 

one let us say — to pick you oud of the stews and 
make you talk. 

The Police move forward, into a region of 

Mrs. D 's. This is horrible; but they are 

75 



Zhc Citg ot 5)reaDful migbt. 



used to it, and evidently consider indignation 
affectation. Everywhere are tlie empty houses, 
and the babbling women in print gowns. The 
clocks in the city are close upon midnight, but 
the Police show no signs of stopping. They 
plunge hither and thither, like wreckers into 
the surf; and each plunge brings up a sample 
of misery, filth, and woe. 

" Sheikh Babu was murdered jast here," they 
say, pulling up in one of the most troublesome 
houses in the ward. It would never do to ap- 
pear ignorant of the murder of Sheikh Babu. 
"I only wonder that more aren't killed." The 
houses with their breakneck staircases, their 
hundred corners, low roofs, hidden courtyards 
and winding passages, seem specially built for 
crime of every kind. A woman — Eurasian — 
rises to a sitting position on a board-charpoy 
and blinks sleepily at the Police. Then she 
throws herself down with a grunt. "What's 
the matter with you?" "I live in Markiss 
Lane and" — this with intense gravity — "I'm 
so drunk. " She has a rather striking gipsy-like 
face, but her language might be improved. 

"Come along," say the Police, "we'll head 

back to Bentinck Street, and put you on the 

road to the Great Eastern." They walk long 

and steadily, and the talk falls on gambling 

76 



2)ecper anD 2)eepcr Still* 



hells. " You ought to see our men rush one of 
'em. They like the work — natives of course. 
When we've marked a hell down, we post men 
at the entrances and carry it. Sometimes the 
Chinese bite, but as a rule they fight fair. It's 
a pity we hadn't a hell to show you. Let's go 
in here — there may be something forward." 
" Here " appears to be in the heart of a Chinese 
quarter, for the pigtails — do they ever go to 
bed? — are scuttling about the streets. " Never 
go into a Chinese place alone, " say the Police, 
and swing open a postern gate in a strong, green 
door. Two Chinamen appear. 

"What are we going to see?" "Japanese 
gir — No, we aren't, by Jove! Catch that 
Chinaman, quicks The pigtail is trying to 
double back across a courtyard into an inner 
chamber ; but a large hand on his shoulder spins 
him round and puts him in rear of the line of 
advancing Englishmen, who are, be it observed, 
making a fair amount of noise with their boots. 
A second door is thrown open, and the visitors 
advance into a large, square room blazing with 
gas. Here thirteen pigtails, deaf and blind to 
the outer world, are bending over a table. The 
captured Chinaman dodges uneasily in the rear 
of the procession. Five — ten — fifteen seconds 
pass, the Englishmen standing in the full light 
77 



XLbc aits 01; SJreaDful TRigbt 



less tlian three paces from the absorbed gang 
who see nothing. Then burly Superintendent 
Lamb brings down his hand on his thigh with a 
crack like a pistol-shot and shouts : " How do, 
John? " Follows a frantic rush of scared Celes- 
tials, almost tumbling over each other in their 
anxiety to get clear. Gudgeon before the rush 
of the pike are nothing to John Chinaman de- 
tected in the act of gambling. One pigtail 
scoops up a pile of copper money, another a 
chinaware soup-bowl, and only a little mound 
of accusing cowries remains on the white mat- 
ting that covers the table. In less than half a 
minute two facts are forcibly brought home to 
the visitor. First, that a pigtail is largely com- 
posed of silk, and rasps the palm of the hand 
as it slides through ; and secondly, that the fore- 
arm of a Chinaman is surprisingly muscular and 
well-developed. "What's going to be done?" 
"Nothing. They're only three of us, and all 
the ringleaders would get away. Look at the 
doors. We've got 'em safe any time we want 
to catch 'em, if this little visit doesn't make 
'em shift their quarters. Hi! John. No pid- 
gin to-night. Show how you makee play. That 
fat youngster there is our informer." 

Half the pigtails have fled into the darkness, 
but the remainder, assured and trebly assured 



2)cepcr anD Beeper StilL 



that tlie Police really mean " no pidgin, " return 
to the table and stand round while the croupier 
proceeds to manipulate the cowries, the little 
curved slip of bamboo and the soup-bowl. They 
never gamble, these innocents. They only come 
to look on, and smoke opium in the next room. 
Yet as the game progresses their eyes light up, 
and one by one they drop in to deposit their pice 
on odd or even — the number of the cowries that 
are covered and left uncovered by the little soup- 
bowl. Mythan is the name of the amusement, 
and, whatever may be its demerits, it is clean. 
The Police look on while their charge plays 
and loots a parchment-skinned horror — one of 
Swift's Struldbrugs, strayed from Laputa — of 
the enormous sum of two annas. The return 
of this wealth, doubled, sets the loser beat- 
ing his forehead against the table from sheer 
gratitude. 

^^ Most immoral game this. A man might 
drop five whole rupees, if he began playing at 
sundown and kept it up all night. Don't you 
ever play whist occasionally? " 

"Now, we didn't bring you round to make 
fun of this department. A man can lose as 
much as ever he likes and he can fight as well, 
and if he loses all his money he steals to get 
more. A Chinaman is insane about gambling, 
79 



Zbc Cft^ of BreaDful IRfgbt 



and half his crime comes from it. It must be 
kept down." "And the other business. Any 
sort of supervision there?" "No; so long as 
they keep outside the penal code. Ask Dr. 

about that. It's outside our department. 

Here we are in Bentinck Street and you can be 
driven to the Great Eastern in a few minutes. 
Joss houses? Oh, yes. If you want more hor- 
rors, Superintendent Lamb will take you round 
with him to-morrow afternoon at five. Eeport 
yourself at the Bow Bazar Thanna at five min- 
utes to. Good-night." 

The Police depart, and in a few minutes the 
silent, well-ordered respectability of Old Coun- 
cil House Street, with the grim Free Kirk at 
the end of it, is reached. All good Calcutta has 
gone to bed, the last tram has passed, and the 
peace of the night is upon the world. Would 
it be wise and rational to climb the spire of that 
kirk, and shout after the fashion of the great 
Lion-slayer of Tarescon: "0 true believers! 
Decency is a fraud and a sham. There is noth- 
ing clean or pure or wholesome under the stars, 
and we are all going to perdition together. 
Amen ! " On second thoughts it would not ; for 
the spire is slippery, the night is hot, and the 
Police have been specially careful to warn their 
charge that he must not be carried away by 
80 



Beeper anD 2)eeper StilL 



tlie sight of horrors that cannot be written or 
hinted at. 

" Good-morning, " says the Policeman tramp- 
ing the pavement in front of the Great Eastern, 
and he nods his head pleasantly to show that he 
is the representative of Law and Peace, and that 
the city of Calcutta is safe from itself for the 
present. 



81 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CONCERNING LUCIA, 

" Was a woman such a woman — cheeks so round and 
lips so red ? 
On the neck the small head buoyant like the bell- 
flower in its bed. " 

Time must be filled in somehow till five this 
afternoon, when Superintendent Lamb will re- 
veal more horrors. Why not, the trams aiding, 
go to the Old Park Street Cemetery? It is pre- 
sumption, of course, because none other than the 
great Sir W. W. Hunter once went there, and 
wove from his visit certain fascinating articles 
for the Englishman ; the memory of which lin- 
gers even to this day, though they were written 
fully two years since. 

But the great Sir W. W. went in his Legisla- 
tive Consular brougham and never in an unbri- 
dled tram-car which pulled up somewhere in the 
middle of Dhurrumtollah. " You want go Park 
Street? No trams going Park Street. You get 
out here." Calcutta tram conductors are not 
polite. Some day one of them will be hurt. 



Concecning Xucia, 



The car shuffles unsympathetically down the 
street, and the evicted is stranded in Dhurrum- 
tollah, which may be the Hammersmith High- 
way of Calcutta. Providence arranged this 
mistake, and paved the way to a Great DiscoF- 
ery now published for the first time. Dhur- 
rumtollah is full of the People of India, walking 
in family parties and groups and confidential 
couples. And the people of India are neither 
Hindu nor Mussulman — Jew, Ethiop, Gueber, 
or expatriated British. They are the Eura= 
sians, and there are hundreds and hundreds of 
them in Dhurrumtollah now. There is Papa 
with a shining black hat fit for a counsellor of 
the Queen, and Mamma, whose silken attire is 
tight upon her portly figure, and The Brood 
made up of straw-hatted, olive-cheeked, sharp- 
eyed little boys, and leggy maidens wearing 
white, open-work stockings calculated to show 
dust. There are the young men who smoke 
bad cigars and carry themselves lordily — such 
as have incomes. There are also the young wo- 
men with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful 
dresses which always fit so badly across the 
shoulders. And they carry prayer-books or 
baskets, because they are either going to mass 
or the market. Without doubt, these are the 
people of India. They were born in it, bred 
83 



XLhc Ctti5 ot BreaDful niQbU 



in it, and will die in it. The Englishman only 
comes to the country, and the natives of course 
were there from the first, but these people have 
been made here, and no one has done anything 
for them except talk and write about them. 
Yet they belong, some of them, to old and hon- 
orable families, hold "houses, messuages, and 
tenements " in Sealdah, and are rich, a few of 
them. They all look prosperous and contented, 
and they chatter eternally in that curious dia- 
lect that no one has yet reduced to print. Be- 
yond what little they please to reveal now and 
again in the newspapers, we know nothing about 
their life which touches so intimately the white 
on the one hand and the black on the other. It 
must be interesting — more interesting than the 
colorless Anglo-Indian article; but who has 
treated of it? There was one novel once in 
which the second heroine was an Eurasienne. 
She was a strictly subordinate character, and 
came to a sad end. The poet of the race, Henry 
Derozio — he of whom Mr. Thomas Edwards 
wrote a history — was bitten with Keats and 
Scott and Shelley, and overlooked in his search 
for material things that lay nearest to him. All 
this mass of humanity in Dhurrumtollah is un- 
exploited and almost unknown. Wanted, there- 
fore, a writer from among the Eurasians, who 
84 



Concerning Xucia* 



shall write so that men shall be pleased to read 
a story of Eurasian life ; then outsiders will be 
interested in the People of India, and will admit 
that the race has possibilities. 

A futile attempt to get to Park Street from 
Dhurrumtollah ends in the market — the Hogg 
Market men call it. Perhaps a knight of that 
name built it. It is not one-half as pretty as 
the Crawford Market, in Bombay, but. ... it 
appears to be the trysting-place of Young Cal- 
cutta. The natural inclination of youth is to lie 
abed late, and to let the seniors do all the hard 
work. Why, therefore, should Pyramus who 
has to be ruling account forms at ten, and 
Thisbe, who cannot be interested in the price of 
second quality beef, wander, in studiously cor- 
rect raiment, round and about the stalls before 
the sun is well clear of the earth? Pyramus 
carries a walking-stick with imitation silver 
straps upon it, and there are cloth tops to his 
boots; but his collar has been two days worn. 
Thisbe crowns her dark head with a blue velvet 
Tam-o' -Shanter ; but one of her boots lacks a 
button, and there is a tear in the left-hand 
glove. Mamma, who despises gloves, is rapidly 
filling a shallow basket, that the coolie-boy car- 
ries, with vegetables, potatoes, purple brinjals, 
and — Oh, Pyramus ! Do you ever kiss Thisbe 
85 



trbe Cits of 2)rca£)ful mghU 



when Mamma is not near? — garlic — yea, lusson 
of the bazar. Mamma is generous in her views 
on garlic. Pyramus comes round the corner of 
the stall looking for nobody in particular — not 
he — and is elaborately polite to Mamma. Some- 
how, he and Thisbe drift off together, and 
Mamma, very portly and very voluble, is left to 
chaffer and sort and select alone. In the name 
of the Sacred Unities do not, young people, re- 
tire to the meat-stalls to exchange confidences ! 
Come up to this end, where the roses are arriv- 
ing in great flat baskets, where the air is heavy 
with the fragrance of flowers, and the young 
buds and greenery are littering all the floor. 
They won't — they prefer talking by the dead, 
unromantic muttons, where there are not so 
many buyers. How they babble ! There must 
have been a quarrel to make up. Thisbe shakes 
the blue velvet Tam-o'-Shanter and says: "0 
yess!" scornfully. Pyramus answers : "No-a, 
no-a. Do-ant say thatt." Mamma's basket is 
full and she picks up Thisbe hastily. Pyramus 
departs. He never came here to do any mar- 
keting. He came to meet Thisbe, who in ten 
years will own a figure very much like Mamma's. 
May their ways be smooth before them, and 
after honest service of the Government, may 
Pyramus retire on Es. 250 per mensen, into a 
86 



Concerning Xucia, 



nice little house somewhere in Monghyr or 
Chunar. 

From love by natural sequence to death. 
Where is the Park Street Cemetery? A hun- 
dred gharriwans leap from their boxes and in- 
vade the market, and after a short struggle one 
of them uncarts his capture in a burial-ground 
— a ghastly new place, close to a tramway. 
This is not what is wanted. The living dead 
are here — the people whose names are not yet 
altogether perished and whose tombstones are 
tended. " Where are the o Id dead ? " " Nobody 
goes there, " says the gharrkvan. " It is up that 
road." He points up a long and utterly deserted 
thoroughfare, running between high walls. 
This is the place, and the entrance to it, with 
its mallee waiting with one brown, battered rose, 
its grilled door and its professional notices, bears 
a hideous likeness to the entrance of Simla 
churchyard. But, once inside, the sightseer 
stands in the heart of utter desolation — all the 
more forlorn for being swept up. Lower Park 
Street cuts a great graveyard in two. The 
guide-books will tell you when the place was 
opened and when it was closed. The eye is 
ready to swear that it is as old as Herculaneum 
and Pompeii. The tombs are small houses. It 
is as though we walked down the streets of a 
87 



Zbc Cits ot 2)reaDfnl mgU. 



town, so tall are they and so closely do they 
stand — a town shrivelled by fire, and scarred by 
frost and siege. They must have been afraid 
of their friends rising up before the due time 
that they weighted them with such cruel mounds 
of masonry. Strong man, weak woman, or 
somebody's "infant son aged fifteen months" — 
it is all the same. For each the squat obelisk, 
the defaced classic temple, the cellaret of 
chunam, or the candlestick of brickwork — the 
heavy slab, the rust-eaten railings, the whopper- 
jawed cherubs and the apoplectic angels. Men 
were rich in those days and could afford to put 
a hundred cubic feet of masonry into the grave 
of even so humble a person as " Jno. Clements, 
Captain of the Country Service, 1820." When 
the " dearly beloved " had held rank answering 
to that of Commissioner, the efforts are still 
more sumptuous and the verse. . . . Well, the 
following speaks for itseK; 

" Soft on thy tomb shall fond Remembrance shed 
The warm yet unavailing tear, 
And purple flowers that deck the honored dead 
Shall strew the loved and honored bier. " 

Failure to comply with the contract does not, let 
us hope, entail forfeiture of the earnest-money; 
or the honored dead might be grieved. The 



Concerning Xucfa* 



slab is out of his tomb, and leans foolishly 
against it ; the railings are rotted, and there are 
no more lasting ornaments than blisters and 
stains, which are the work of the weather, and 
not the result of the " warm yet unavailing tear. " 
The eyes that promised to shed them have been 
closed any time these seventy years. 

Let us go about and moralize cheaply on the 
tombstones, trailing the robe of pious reflection 
up and down the pathways of the grave. Here 
is a big and stately tomb sacred to "Lucia," 
who died in 1776 a.d., aged 23. Here also be 
verses which an irreverent thumb can bring to 
light. Thus they wrote, when their hearts were 
heavy in them, one hundred and sixteen years 
ago: 

" What needs the emblem, what the plaintive strain, 
What all the arts that sculpture e'er expressed, 
To tell the treasure that these walls contain? 
Let those declare it most who knew her best. 

" Th tender pity she would oft display 

Shall be with interest at her shrine returned, 
Connubial love, connubial tears repay, 

And Lucia loved shall still be Lucia mourned. 

" Though closed the lips, though stopped the tuneful 
breath, 
The silent, clay-cold monitress shall teach — 
In all the alarming eloquence of death 

With double pathos to the heart shall preach. 



Zhc Cits ot DreaDtul Bigbt. 



"Shall teach the virtuous maid, the faithful wife, 
If young and fair, that young and fair was she, 

Then close the useful lesson of her life, 
And tell them what she is, they soon must be." 

That goes well, even after all these years, does 
it not? and seems to bring Lucia very near, in 
spite of what the later generation is pleased to 
call the stiltedness of the old-time verse. 

Who will declare the merits of Lucia — dead 
in her spring before there was even a Hickey^s 
Gazette to chronicle the amusements of Calcutta, 
and publish, with scurrilous asterisks, the liai- 
sons of heads of departments? What pot-bellied 
East Indiaman brought the "virtuous maid" 
up the river, and did Lucia " make her bargain, " 
as the cant of those times went, on the first, 
second, or third day after her arrival? Or did 
she, with the others of the batch, give a spin- 
sters' ball as a last trial — following the custom 
of the country? No. She was a fair Kentish 
maiden, sent out, at a cost of five hundred 
pounds, English money, under the captain's 
charge, to wed the man of her choice, and he 
knew Clive well, had had dealings with Omi- 
chand, and talked to men who had lived through 
the terrible night in the Black Hole. He was 
a rich man, Lucia's battered tomb proves it, and 
he gave Lucia all that her heart could wish. 
90 



Concerning Xucia, 



A green -painted boat to take the air in on the 
river of evenings. Coffree slave-boys who could 
play on the French horn, and even a very ele- 
gant, neat coach with a genteel rutlan roof orna- 
mented with flowers very highly finished, ten 
best polished plate glasses, ornamented with a 
few elegant medallions enriched with mother-o'- 
pearl, that she might take her drive on the 
course as befitted a factor's wife. All these 
things he gave her. And when the convoys 
came up the river, and the guns thundered, and 
the servants of the Honorable the East India 
Company drank to the king's health, be sure 
that Lucia before all the other ladies in the fort 
had her choice of the new stuffs from England 
and was cordially hated in consequence. Tilly 
Kettle painted her picture a little before she 
died, and the hot-blooded young writers did 
duel with small swords in the fort ditch for the 
honor of piloting her through a minuet at the 
Calcutta theatre or the Punch House. But 
Warren Hastings danced with her instead, and 
the writers were confounded — every man of 
them. She was a toast far up the river. And 
she walked m the evening on the bastions of 
Eort- William, and said : "La! I protest!" It 
was there that she exchanged congratulations 
with all her friends on the 20th of October, 
91 



^be Citg ot BreaDful migbt 



when those who were alive gathered together to 
felicitate themselves on having come through 
another hot season; and the men — even the 
sober factor saw no wrong here — got most roy- 
ally and Britishly drunk on Madeira that had 
twice rounded the Cape. But Lucia fell sick, 
and the doctor — he who went home after seven 
years with five lakhs and a half, and a corner 
of this vast graveyard to his account — said that 
it was a pukka or putrid fever, and the system 
required strengthening. So they fed Lucia on 
hot curries, and mulled wine worked up with 
spirits and fortified with spices, for nearly a 
week ; at the end of which time she closed her 
eyes on the weary, weary river and the fort for- 
ever, and a gallant, with a turn for belles lettres, 
wept openly as men did then and had no shame 
of it, and composed the verses above set, and 
thought himself a neat hand at the pen — stap his 
vitals! But the factor was so grieved that he 
could write nothing at all — could only spend his 
money — and he counted his wealth by lakhs — on 
a sumptuous grave. A little later on he took 

comfort, and when the next batch came out 

But this has nothing whatever to do with the 
story of Lucia, the virtuous maid, the faithful 
wife. Her ghost went to Mrs. Westland's 
powder ball, and looked very beautiful. 



MA^.6 li>b'i» 



